Cecilia Beaux was an American society portraitist, whose subjects included First Lady Edith Roosevelt, Admiral Sir David Beatty and Georges Clemenceau.
Trained in Philadelphia, she went on to study in Paris, strongly influenced by two classical painters Tony Robert-Fleury and William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who avoided avant-garde movements. In turn, she resisted impressionism and cubism, remaining a strongly individual figurative artist. Her style, however, invited comparisons with John Singer Sargent; at one exhibition, Bernard Berenson joked that her paintings were the best Sargents in the room. She could flatter her subjects without artifice, and showed great insight into character. Like her instructor William Sartain, she believed there was a connection between physical characteristics and behavioral traits.
Beaux became the first woman teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She was awarded a gold medal for lifetime achievement by the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and honoured by Eleanor Roosevelt as "the American woman who had made the greatest contribution to the culture of the world".
Trained in Philadelphia, she went on to study in Paris, strongly influenced by two classical painters Tony Robert-Fleury and William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who avoided avant-garde movements. In turn, she resisted impressionism and cubism, remaining a strongly individual figurative artist. Her style, however, invited comparisons with John Singer Sargent; at one exhibition, Bernard Berenson joked that her paintings were the best Sargents in the room. She could flatter her subjects without artifice, and showed great insight into character. Like her instructor William Sartain, she believed there was a connection between physical characteristics and behavioral traits.
Beaux became the first woman teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She was awarded a gold medal for lifetime achievement by the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and honoured by Eleanor Roosevelt as "the American woman who had made the greatest contribution to the culture of the world".
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