Constance La Boiteaux

The style of this contemplative portrait, which comes some twenty years after A Study in White (also in RPM's collection), moves Hawthorne into the realm of American modernism. The painterly style of impressionism is replaced by crisp lines, neutral background and emphasis on the psychological character of the sitter. The sitter is Constance Le Boiteaux, whose family had settled in Bryn Mawr. When his art dealer, William Macbeth, wrote to him that certain critics were complaining that too many of his subjects seemed “sad,” Hawthorne responded, “I realize that your criticism of their being ‘sad’ is just, but I am not going to try to please the newspapers—they are a flock of sheep who have gone crazy on the new art idea. They are calling me ‘old hat’ because I don’t swing with every new fad…”