Artifact World Gallery
Get the iOS app

Mother and Mary by Tarbell, Edmund Charles

Tarbell, Edmund Charles · 1922

Edmund C. Tarbell's Mother and Mary, painted in 1922 and now in a private collection, is a late work by the artist who was, at that moment, the most financially successful painter in America. Tarbell earned more than any other living American artist, and his signature subjects were exactly this: light-filled rooms, genteel women, and the quiet rhythms of a New England interior.

Look first at the mother's hands and the pink fabric she stitches: Tarbell's brushwork is loose but precise, the soft folds of the garment catching the daylight that streams through the unseen windows. Then move to the girl at the desk. That is his daughter Mary, her face modeled with a tenderness that comes from painting someone you have known her whole life.

Tarbell was a leader of the Boston School, a group that fused French academic training with a distinctly American impressionism. He built a studio attached to his house in New Castle, New Hampshire, and turned his own family into his most enduring subject. His wife, his daughters, his sitting rooms, he painted them repeatedly, refining the same themes of domestic calm and filtered light.

The painting resurfaced at auction in 2006, part of Sotheby's American Paintings sale, where it sold for $441,600 against an estimate of $200,000 to $300,000. A quiet domestic scene, still carrying real weight in the market.

Details

His pictures of refined New England interiors defined the Boston School.
His pictures of refined New England interiors defined the Boston School.
This mother sews a pink garment. Light pools around her hands.
This mother sews a pink garment. Light pools around her hands.
The girl at the desk is his daughter Mary. Her face is in half-shadow.
The girl at the desk is his daughter Mary. Her face is in half-shadow.
Tarbell painted his own family, in his own house, across four decades.
Tarbell painted his own family, in his own house, across four decades.
Transcript

By 1922, Edmund Tarbell was America's highest-paid living painter. His pictures of refined New England interiors defined the Boston School. This mother sews a pink garment. Light pools around her hands. The girl at the desk is his daughter Mary. Her face is in half-shadow. Tarbell painted his own family, in his own house, across four decades. In 2006 this canvas sold at Sotheby's for $441,600.