Helen Bigelow Merriman
Artist
Cecilia Beaux
(American, 1855–1942)
Date1908
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensionscanvas: 109.9 × 73.7 cm (43 1/4 × 29 in.)
framed: 134 × 98.4 × 12.7 cm (52 3/4 × 38 3/4 × 5 in.)
framed: 134 × 98.4 × 12.7 cm (52 3/4 × 38 3/4 × 5 in.)
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LineStoddard Acquisition Fund
Object number2007.175
Label TextHaving achieved fame as America’s leading female society portraitist, Cecilia Beaux painted this faithful, yet sympathetic and graceful rendering of an elderly Helen Bigelow Merriman, one of the Worcester Art Museum’s original founders. Displayed at the Museum’s 1909 annual exhibition, the portrait captures Merriman’s dignified comportment as she sits with her hands folded together. Beaux’s dark palette and fluid application of paint imbues the work with a cosmopolitan look evocative of Tarbell and Chase, while highlighting details such as the polished chair spindles and blue-green shawl. In her 1891 treatise Concerning Portraits and Portraiture, Merriman describes her philosophical approach to portraiture that appealed to Beaux’s style: “it is this power of forming an abstract idea of a person—of seeing him whole, as it were, apart from any trifling incidental variations—that marks the true artist.”ProvenanceComissioned by the sitter, Helen Bigelow Merriman, around 1908; donated by sitter to the Memorial Hospital, North Conway, NH, date unknown; sold to the Worcester Art Museum by the Hospital in 2008.On View
Not on view
