Boston school
The Boston School was a circle of painters - Edmund C. Tarbell, Frank Weston Benson, William McGregor Paxton and Joseph DeCamp among them - who taught at the Museum of Fine Arts school and set their stamp on Boston art from the 1890s into the 1920s; several were among the Ten American Painters. They adapted French Impressionist light to American subjects while keeping the solid draftsmanship of their academic training, and their world is conspicuously genteel: women in white dresses at tea tables, sun-flooded parlors, quiet gardens and graceful portraits of the city's patrician class. Their students, the 'Tarbellites', carried the manner into the next generation. When Boston Expressionism arrived in the 1940s it defined itself partly against this refined establishment style, but the Boston School's luminous interiors remain among the best-loved American paintings of their era.
Defining characteristics
- Sunlit domestic interiors with elegantly dressed figures
- Impressionist broken color held together by academic drawing
- Refined, flattering figure painting and portraiture of genteel subjects
- Quiet, harmonious compositions with a polished finish
- Soft, luminous daylight modeled with subtle value control
Key figures
- Edmund C. Tarbell (1862-1938) — Leading 'Tarbellite' whose luminous interiors defined the school
- Frank Weston Benson (1862-1951) — Portraitist and outdoor figure painter of high-society subjects
- William McGregor Paxton (1869-1941) — Painter of quiet interiors and careful portraits, often with Chinese porcelain
- Joseph DeCamp (1858-1923) — Figure and portrait painter of the Ten American Painters
Example works
- The Breakfast Room — Edmund C. Tarbell
- Eleanor — Frank Weston Benson (1907)
- The New Necklace — William McGregor Paxton (1910)
Sources
- Boston school - Wikipedia encyclopedia