Editor's note: The New-York Historical Society provided source material to Resource Library for the following article. If you have questions or comments regarding the source material, please contact the New-York Historical Society directly through either this phone number or web address:

 

Beauty's Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America

September 27, 2013 - March 9, 2014

 

Beauty's Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America, on view at the New-York Historical Society from September 27, 2013 through March 9, 2014, explores the critical and popular resurgence of portraiture in the United States in the period bounded by the close of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I. Known as the Gilded Age, the era was marked by unprecedented industrial expansion yielding vast personal fortunes. Today, the Gilded Age conjures visions of material opulence and personal excess, yet it also inspired a fascinating chapter in American cultural and social history. With the amassing of great fortunes came the drive to document the wealthy in portraiture, echoing a cultural pattern reaching back to colonial times. A brilliant generation of American and European artists rose to meet that demand.(right: George Peter Alexander Healy (American, 1813 - 1894), Emma Cecilia Thursby (1845-1931), 1879, Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Gift of the Estate of Ina Love Thursby, 1944.17)

Organized for the New-York Historical Society by guest curator Dr. Barbara Dayer Gallati, the exhibition features sixty-five portraits selected from New-York Historical's outstanding holdings. The sitters -- ranging from famous society beauties to powerful titans of business and industry -- left lasting legacies that contributed to the cultural and economic growth of the nation. Beauty's Legacy also takes its cue from a series of three important portrait loan exhibitions mounted in New York in the 1890s that were organized for charitable purposes by the city's social elite. A number of paintings in Beauty's Legacy were featured in those historic displays and will be installed to evoke the late-nineteenth-century viewing experience.

Beauty's Legacy includes portraits of prominent New Yorkers, including Emma Thursby, Samuel Verplanck Hoffman, Mary Barrett Wendell, Reverend Henry Codman Potter, and Mary Gardiner Thompson, painted by noted American artists such as John Singer Sargent, James Carroll Beckwith, George Peter Alexander Healy, Daniel Huntington, Eastman Johnson, and Benjamin Curtis Porter. The exhibition also reveals the highly competitive nature of the portrait market, as these American portraitists found themselves in fierce rivalry for American patronage with their European counterparts. The vigorous demand for works by European masters is conveyed by portraits of other leading New Yorkers -- including James Hazen Hyde, Georgina Schuyler, Samuel Ward McAllister, Cortlandt Field Bishop, Leonard and Rosalie Lewisohn, and Samuel Untermyer -- by European artists Léon Bonnat, (Adolphe) William Bouguereau, Carolus-Duran, Alexandre Cabanel, Anders Zorn, and Théobald Chartran. The exhibition will also feature a selection of twenty-five exquisite portraits from Peter Marié's vast collection of miniatures, known by his contemporaries as his "Gallery of Beauty," underscoring the intersection of beauty, celebrity, and social prestige.

Beauty's Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America is accompanied by a catalogue of the same title, published by the New-York Historical Society in association with D Giles Limited, London. The fully-illustrated volume includes essays by Dr. Gallati and Dr. Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator of the Museum at The Fashion Institute of Technology, New York.

 

Wall panel texts from the exhibition

Please click here to view wall panel texts from the exhibition.

 

Selected extended object labels from the exhibition

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856 - 1925), Mrs. Jacob Wendel, 1888. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Gift of the Roger and Susan Hertog Charitable Fund and Jan and Warren Adelson, 2012.21
 
Sargent painted this portrait of Mary Barrett Wendell (1832-1912) during his first professional foray on American soil. In 1863 Mary Barrett Wendell and Jacob Wendell moved to New York, where he formed one of the leading dry-goods houses. She wears a splendid gown (probably a Worth creation) accented with iridescent Indian beetle­wing embroidery, her hair is fashionably dressed, and she is flanked by a luxuriant arrangement of hydrangeas. Yet, she seems to shrink from the artist's famously unsparing eye. The image implies Mary Wendell's severe character; a descendant wrote that she was regarded as an "iron woman." Although she did not number among the upper reaches of New York society, her granddaughter married the 6th Earl of Carnarvon, thus becoming the mistress of Highclere Castle of Downton Abbey fame.
 
 
George Peter Alexander Healy (American, 1813 - 1894), Emma Cecilia Thursby (1845-1931), 1879. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Gift of the Estate of Ina Love Thursby, 1944.17
 
George Peter Alexander Healy achieved international fame for his portraits of royalty, military heroes, and the socially elite. He painted the Brooklyn-born concert singer Emma Cecilia Thursby (1845-1931) in his Paris studio in May 1879, shortly after she had made her French debut at the Théâtre du Châtelet. This painting of the singer (who likely wears a gown from the House of Worth) was shown at the 1880 Paris Salon. Thursby's challenging concert schedule exerted a heavy toll on her health, and by 1886 she recuperated while traveling in Europe with her sister and a close friend, Jeannette Ovington.

 
George Peter Alexander Healy (American, 1813 - 1894), Jeannie Ovington (1863-1926), 1887. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Gift of the Estate of Ina Love Thursby, through Walter M. Brown, 1944.18
 
Healy painted this uncommonly intimate portrait of Jeannette Maria Ovington (1863-1926) in Paris. A hothouse atmosphere is created by the constricted pictorial space, the flush of her cheeks, her inviting, heavily lidded eyes, and the sumptuous fabrics of her clothing and the upholstered pillow. The painting was probably commissioned by the famous concert singer Emma Thursby (whose portrait hangs nearby) as a memento of the women's friendship. By 1886 Jeannette Ovington was part of Emma Thursby's household, an arrangement that ended with the girl's 1887 marriage to the millionaire Bostonian Nathan Appleton. The Appletons made their home in Paris, but within two years they separated and Jeannette resumed living with Emma Thursby until they quarreled about finances.

 
Daniel Huntington (American, 1816 - 1906), Mary Gardiner Thompson (1844-1935), 1898. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Bequest of Mary Gardiner Thompson, 1939.156
 
The philanthropist Mary Gardiner Thompson (1844-1935) was descended from some of the oldest American families. One line could be traced to Lion Gardiner, who purchased Gardiners Island from the Montauk tribe in 1639. She was in her mid-fifties when this portrait was painted, yet her flawless, rosy complexion suggests a fair measure of idealization on the artist's part. The stylish white gown lends an impression of virginal purity, underscoring the fact that she remained unmarried. When she died at ninety-one, her estate, which amounted to more than $13,000,000, was divided among several cultural organizations, including the New-York Historical Society.

 
Henry Augustus Loop (American, 1831 - 1895), Fannie Fredericka Dyckman and Mary Alice Dyckman, 1876. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Bequest of Fannie Fredericka Dyckman, 1951.374
 
Fannie Fredericka Dyckman (1871-1951) stands next to her sister Mary Alice (1869­1950), her hand resting affectionately on the elder girl's shoulder. Their crisp white dresses and golden lockets denote their privileged heritage that reached back to 1666, when an ancestor purchased extensive Manhattan property. The leafy outdoor setting conforms to the notion that childhood, like nature, is an unspoiled state. This meaning is underscored by the daisies at lower right, which symbolize innocence. As adults, both women were active in philanthropic endeavors, including the restoration of the 1783 Dyckman farmhouse.

 
James Montgomery Flagg (American, 1877 - 1960), Nellie McCormick Flagg (1876-1923), ca. 1906. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Gift of Arnold Scaasi and Parker Ladd, 2001.1
 
Although Flagg is best known for his World War I poster of Uncle Sam saying, "I Want YOU!," his fleeting ambitions in the area of formal portraiture are revealed in this painting of his first wife, the Saint Louis socialite Nellie McCormick Flagg (1866-1923), whom he married in 1899. Flagg acknowledged his "worship" of John Singer Sargent, whose influence is felt in the dynamic pose and the dashingly painted gown. This portrait deserves consideration in light of Flagg's statement about female beauty: "She should be tall, with wide shoulders; a face as symmetrical as a Greek vase; thick, wavy hair . . . long lashes; straight nose tipped up a bit at the end; her eyes so full of feminine allure that your heart skips a beat when you gaze into them."
 
 
 
Meave Thompson Gedney (1863 - 1905), Mrs. William Waldorf Astor (Mary Dahlgren Paul, 1856-1894), 1890. Watercolor on ivory; silver gilt. New-York Historical Society, Gift of the Estate of Peter Marié, 1905.10
 
Mary "Mamie" Dalhgren Paul (1858-1894), a daughter of a Philadelphia physician, married William Waldorf Astor, a nephew of social leader Caroline Astor, in 1878. Despite her shyness, Mary Astor was a successful society hostess during her husband's tenure as U.S. minister to Italy, from 1882 to 1885. Failing in his efforts to have his wife supplant his aunt Caroline as "The" Mrs. Astor, William Astor moved his family to England, where in 1916 he attained the title of lst Viscount Astor. Although supposedly unenthusiastic about her husband's aspirations, Mary Astor's popularity at Queen Victoria's court gained her an appointment as Mistress of the Robes. She died of peritonitis in 1894.
 
 
Meave Thompson Gedney (1863 - 1905), Mrs. Bradley Martin (ca. 1848-1920), 1897. Watercolor on ivory; silver gilt. New-York Historical Society, Gift of the Estate of Peter Marié, 1905.156
 
Cornelia Sherman (1845 - 1920) married Bradley Martin in 1869, and the couple lived with her parents in New York. The Martins became socially prominent in 1881, when she inherited several million dollars from her father. In 1897 Cornelia Martin hosted one of the most famous costume balls of the Gilded Age in an effort to surpass the legendary Vanderbilt ball of 1883. This miniature is based on a photograph of the sitter dressed as Mary, Queen of Scots. However, the party was mounted during a severe economic depression and became a symbol of decadence. The Martins went into self-imposed exile in England in the wake of negative press.


(above: Daniel Huntington (American, 1816 - 1906), Mary Gardiner Thompson (1844-1935), 1898, Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Bequest of Mary Gardiner Thompson, 1939.156)

 

(above: Henry Augustus Loop (American, 1831 - 1895), Fannie Fredericka Dyckman and Mary Alice Dyckman, 1876, Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Bequest of Fannie Fredericka Dyckman, 1951.374)

 

(above: James Montgomery Flagg (American, 1877 - 1960), Nellie McCormick Flagg (1876-1923), ca. 1906, Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Gift of Arnold Scaasi and Parker Ladd, 2001.1)

 

Resource Library editor's note

RL readers may also enjoy:

For further biographical information on certain artists cited above please see America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.

Read more articles and essays concerning this institutional source by visiting the sub-index page for the New-York Historical Society in Resource Library.

Search Resource Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art.

Copyright 2014 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights reserved.