About Me

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Washington, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Thursday, February 22, 2018

two tender creatures

Smithsonian American Art Museum http://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1977.92

"Sit for me just a little," I imagine J. Alden Weir saying to his wife Anna sometime round 1890. "I want to paint you exactly as you are right now."  The result was this small impressionistic oil "Portrait of a Lady with a Dog (Anna Baker Weir),"  kept in the family till the 1970's.  (The dog's name was Gyp.)  Weir was a member of "The Ten," the breakaway group of American artists that challenged stylistic and exhibition norms of the time. An interesting and detailed account of Weir can be found on the NPS.gov site of his farm, here.



1 comment:

parlance said...

I like it in general, but there's something stiff about the dog, I reckon.