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The loose energetic brushwork in the woman's blouse and hair are elements of the Impressionist style.

Tarbell was a leading member of the Boston School of painters, known for their pictures of young women engaged in domestic activities.

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This lady, concentrating on adjusting her hat with a pearl-tipped hatpin, is typical of Edmund Tarbell's refined, everyday subjects. Like Frank Benson, Tarbell belonged to the Boston School, which flourished during the early decades of the 20th century. These painters were renowned for their pictures of young women engaged in sedentary and often solitary domestic activities, or posed in sunlit outdoor settings. In his interior compositions, Tarbell concentrated upon the insular world of upper-class women, depicting them in an austere but elegant manner, attired in the latest fashions.

The passages of loose, energetic brushwork in her blouse and hair display the spontaneity that Tarbell brought to his outdoor Impressionist paintings. Artists of the Boston School explored aspects of texture, which can be seen in the handling of the creases in the woman's blouse and the feathers on her hat. Tarbell's expert drawing technique is evident in the rendering of the sitter's arm and the handling of her facial features. Like many painters of the Boston School, Tarbell was influenced by the paintings of the 17th-century Dutch artist Jan Vermeer, whose works were rediscovered in the mid-19th century. In fact, a corner of one of Vermeer's paintings appears at the upper right of Tarbell's elegant interior as a tribute to this Dutch master.

[Boston School artists] are more interested in the rendering of beauty than of fact.
-Artist and critic Guy Pène Du Bois, 1915

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Edmund Charles Tarbell

Preparing for the Matinee, 1907

oil on canvas

45 ½ x 35 ½ in.

Gift of Mrs. John C. Rauch, Sr.

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Edmund Tarbell was the leader of the Boston School, a group of artists who primarily painted women in interior and exterior settings in an Impressionist manner. Other members of the group were Frank Benson, Joseph De Camp, Phillip Leslie Hale, and William Paxton. Tarbell was born in West Groton, Massachusetts, in 1862 and studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He traveled to Paris in 1883, where he studied at the Académie Julian with fellow artist Frank Benson. In 1889, Tarbell began teaching painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he taught for 24 years. It was during this time that he started focusing on painting studies of genteel women enjoying leisure activities. In 1898 he joined The Ten American Painters, a group including America’s leading Impressionist artists. The group was formed in opposition to the Society of American Artists and their overly chaotic and commercial approach to exhibitions. In 1918 Tarbell became the director of the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D. C., where he painted numerous portraits, including presidents Hoover and Wilson. His reputation and fame, however, rests on his interior genre scenes, which are reminiscent of the 17^th-century Dutch painter Vermeer.

In Preparing for the Matinee, the woman, who is concentrating on adjusting her hat with a pearl-tipped hatpin, is typical of Tarbell’s refined everyday subjects. The painting imitates elements in several of Vermeer’s paintings and even includes a portion of Vermeer’s The Music Lesson on the wall. The sitter was Charlotte Barton, who lived in Boston. In preparation for her sittings, Tarbell requested the shipment of a settee and gilded mirror from his Boston studio. The composition, which was developed around these props, exemplifies the lifestyle of Boston Brahmin women. Both idealist and Impressionist in style, the painting is an example of the best of Tarbell’s work.

Reference

Susan Strickler, Erica Hirshler, and Linda Docherty. Impressionism Transformed: The Paintings of Edmund C. Tarbell, Manchester, NH: Currier Gallery of Art, 2001. ISBN-13: 978-0929710259