|
Fairfield Porter (American, 1907-1975)
Elizabeth in a Red Chair, 1961
Oil on canvas, 44-3/4 x 39-3/4 in.
Signed and dated, lower right: Fairfield Porter 61.
Gift of the Family of Fairfield Porter. 1982.3
Although he worked during the period when Abstract Expressionism dominated the art scene, Fairfield Porter always remained a representational painter, focusing on landscapes, interiors and portraits of family, friends and other artists. He studied with Thomas Hart Benton and Boardman Robinson at the Art Students League in New York and eventually gained recognition as "the `dean' of contemporary American representational painters." Porter was active as an art critic during the 1950s and he wrote a monograph on the nineteenth-century American realist Thomas Eakins. One of the greatest influences on Porter's style was the French artist Edouard Vuillard whose paintings of intimate domestic interiors evoke a bourgeois ambience. Like Vuillard, in Elizabeth in a Red Chair Porter creates a carefully structured, balanced composition that works with the harmonious color scheme to suggest a mood of quiet contentment.
|
|
