Edmund Charles Tarbell was an American painter. He was a representative of the style of Impressionism. Tarbell was a leading member of a group of painters which were known as the Boston School. He became famous for plein air figure studies. They usually combined masterful form, colour and brushwork. Edmund C. Tarbell was also a prominent portrait painter, who painted many notable people of the day, including several presidents.
Background
Tarbell was born in Groton, Massachusetts, United States, on April 26, 1862, into a family which immigrated from England in 1647. His father, Edmund Whitney Tarbell, died of typhoid fever in 1863 while serving in the American Civil War. His mother, Mary Sophia Fernald, then remarried to David Frank Hartford, a shoemaking-machine manufacturer, and moved with him to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, leaving young "Ned" (as Edmund C. Tarbell was nicknamed) and his elder sister, Nellie Sophia, to be raised by their paternal grandparents in Groton.
Education
From an early age, Edmund Tarbell demonstrated his passion for art and his outstanding artistic skills. This led him to take evening art lessons from George H. Bartlett at the Massachusetts Normal Art School (now Massachusetts College of Art and Design).
Between 1877 and 1880 Tarbell apprenticed at the Forbes Lithographic Company in Boston. In 1879 he began his studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University studying under the supervision of Otto Grundmann. He studied there along with two other future members of the Ten American Painters, including Robert Reid and Frank Weston Benson.
Because of his vivid talent, Edmund Tarbell was encouraged to continue his studies in Paris, France, then the centre of the art world. In 1883 Tarbell entered the Académie Julian (now part of ESAG Penninghen) to study under Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre. Academic training in Paris included copying Old Master paintings at the Louvre Museum, but also the city exposed him to the Impressionism movement then sweeping the galleries of Paris. That duality would imprint his oeuvre. In 1884 Edmund Tarbell's education included a Grand Tour to Italy, and the following year he also visited Italy, Belgium, Germany and Brittany.
Tarbell moved from Paris to Boston in 1886, where he started his career as an illustrator, private art instructor and portrait painter. He assumed the position of his former mentor, Otto Grundmann, at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (now the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University) in 1889, where he was a popular teacher. He gave his pupils a substantial academic art training and his influence on Boston painting was so extensive that his followers were dubbed "The Tarbellites." Among his students were Margaret Fitzhugh Browne, Bertha Coolidge, F. Luis Mora, Marguerite Stuber Pearson, Marie Danforth Page, and Lilian Westcott Hale.
His painting "In the Orchard" (1891) established his reputation as an artist. Many still consider this work to be his masterpiece. Edmund Tarbell became renowned for impressionistic, richly-hued images of figures in landscapes. His later artworks were influenced by Johannes Vermeer. Here, he typically portrayed figures in fine Colonial Revival interiors, painted with restrained brushwork and colour.
Throughout his career, the artist's wife and their four children would be his most favourite models. As a result, his paintings chronicle their lives.
While working as a teacher at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Tarbell lived first in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and later he moved to the former Hotel Somerset in Boston, not far from his studio in the Fenway Studios on Ipswich Street.
In 1912 the Museum of Fine Arts hired Huger Elliott, who had worked at the Rhode Island School of Design as Supervisor of Educational Work. Elliott decided to reorganize the Museum School. Eventually, Edmund Tarbell resigned together with Frank W. Benson, his friend and fellow instructor, in December 1912. The two fellows discussed founding a society to encourage art and artists in the city. So with financial backing from Lilla Cabot Perry, painter and affluent Brahmin, The Guild of Boston Artists was established in 1914. Tarbell became its first president, serving until 1924.
In 1918 Tarbell was appointed principal of the art school at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (now the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design) in Washington, DC.; this position he held until 1926. However, the Museum of Fine Arts suggested him to return to the Museum School, where he had occupied the post of a Chairman of the Advisory Council since 1925. In 1930 Tarbell resigned from the school.
Achievements
Edmund Charles Tarbell made a significant contribution to America's place in the world of art. He is regarded as one of the best American Impressionist painters. The artist created portraits of many notable people of his day, including Yale University President Timothy Dwight, industrialist Henry Clay Frick, and U.S. Presidents Calvin Coolidge, Woodrow Wilson, and Herbert Hoover.
Tarbell's works were widely exhibited and he was a recipient of numerous awards and medals, including the Thomas B. Clarke prize of the National Academy of Design in 1890, 1894, and 1900, Columbian Exposition Medal in 1893, and Lippincott Prize, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in 1895.
Besides, Tarbell served as juror of painting at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition.
Tarbell's paintings are presented in numerous American art collections and museums, including the White House, the Corcoran Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Academy of Design.
To My Mother, Portrait of Maria Sophia (Fernald) Tarbell
Mary at the Harpsichord
Portrait of George Dempsey
Still life with flowers and statue
Mary with a Black Hat
Mercie in Room Interior
Crimson and gold
Still Life with Compote of Fruit and an Oriental Figurine
My favorite doll
Membership
Tarbell was a member of the Ten American Painters - an artists' group formed in 1898 to exhibit their work as a unified group. Edmund Tarbell was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design in 1906, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1927.
National Academy of Design
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United States
1906
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
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United States
1927
Ten American Painters
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United States
1898
Interests
Artists
Johannes Vermeer
Connections
Tarbell married Emeline Arnold Souther, an art student and a daughter of a prominent Dorchester family, in 1888. The marriage produced four children, three daughters, Josephine and Mercie Tarbell, Mary Schaffer, and one son, Edmund Arnold Tarbell. Edmund Tarbell often depicted his family in many of his artworks.
Edmund C. Tarbell: Poet of Domesticity
This elegant volume presents Tarbell's finest work in the context of a biographical text filled with fascinating quotations from the artist's contemporaries.
