Cecilia Beaux
Following the early death of her mother, Cecilia Beaux was raised by her grandmother and aunt. From the latter she learned a sense of independence, something typically not encouraged in women of the time. Beaux began to study drawing at the age of 16 and later traveled to France to continue her art education. Upon her return to the United States, she became the first female faculty member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, teaching there for over twenty years.
Is there a difference between male and female representations of women?
The subject of this painting has been identified as a girl from Brittany, France’s northwestern-most region. Beaux spent the summer of 1888 at the artists’ colony of Concarneau in Brittany, where she was intrigued by her encounters with local people, later writing about their customs, clothing, and appearance. Breton peasant subjects were common among American artists, and Beaux gifted this portrait to her friend Anne D. Blake, a Boston-born painter who later became Beaux’s travel companion.
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd