Ebba Bohm
Why do we idealize others?
Fuller was involved with the artists’ colony in Cornish, New Hampshire, a special atmosphere where artists worked together against a backdrop of theater, poetry, and gardening. This portrait shows Ebba Bohm, a Swedish model who lived with the Fuller family in Cornish, as she contemplates a vase of irises, lost in an idealized world of the artist’s making. Her kimono and the vase of flowers allude to Asian aesthetics, which influenced many American painters at the time.
\ Artist
Henry Brown Fuller
Henry Fuller came from an artistic family, and he studied with the painters Dennis Bunker, William Merritt Chase, and Kenyon Cox. The most productive years of his career were spent at the artists' colony of Cornish, New Hampshire, a community where artists balanced their work in the studio with theatricals, poetry, and gardening. Fuller's work is not especially well known, nor do many examples exist—he was not a leader of the Cornish colony, but he admirably embodied its ideals and concerns.
\ About
Oil on canvas
Gift of Blair Fuller