HENRY SALEM HUBBELL (AMERICAN 1870-1949)

HENRY SALEM HUBBELL (AMERICAN 1870-1949)

The Lavender Lady,
oil on canvas
103 x 103 cm (39 1/2 x 39 1/2 in.)

PROVENANCE
John Castano Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
Private collection, Princeton, Massachusetts, acquired from the above, 1965.

LITERATURE
Jay Williams, "Henry Salem Hubbell," American Art Review X, no. 5 (October 1998): 170-179 (illustrated)

LOT NOTES
In his landmark article on the artist, curator Jay Williams writes on this painting: The female figure in The Lavender Lady is typical of Hubbell's mature subject matter. In some ways the artist's subjects are like those of Richard Miller and Frederick Frieseke, with whom he is often associated. . . . Hubbell enjoyed painting the patterns of textiles and ceramics, and often triangulated his compositions using a preconceived palette (a concept he learned as a student of Whistler). Here, the blue and yellow-striped skirt is a key compositional element that draws the eye to the patterned drapery and the circular platter on the mantle. . . . After Hubbell returned to American in 1911, he earned his living as a portrait painter. His better portraits often seem like figurative genre paintings, with the same emphasis on lively color combinations and impressionist brushwork. It is possible that The Lavender Lady may actually be a version of a commissioned portrait. Earlier that year, in a foreword to the catalog of the Henry Salem Hubbell exhibition held at the McKissick Museum in 1998, renowned scholar of American impressionism William H. Gerdts calls Hubbell a "painter of exquisite imagery" and refers to the "full development and display of sensuous beauty" in his finest paintings.

Born in 1870, Henry Salem Hubbell was an American impressionist painter known for portraiture. Hubbell trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied under William Merritt Chase, as well as the Academie Julian and the Academie Carmen, both in Paris. The founder of the latter, James McNeill Whistler, greatly influenced HubbellÂ’s works, particularly his use of color in figurative painting. In 1901, HubbellÂ’s painting Une belle occasion, Une petite cuisine won Honorable Mention at the Paris Salon, bringing him much acclaim and attention throughout Paris. In 1908, Hubbell joined a colony of American impressionists in Giverny, where he befriended Claude Monet and painted two of his best-known works, By the Fireside and The Orange Robe, both of which were exhibited in the Paris Salon.

In 1910, Hubbell returned to the United States and was later appointed as head of the painting department at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) before finally moving to Miami in 1924, where he would stay for the rest of his life. Hubbell became celebrated for his portraiture in America and was even commissioned to capture the likenesses of such prominent public figures as Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Hubbell stopped painting after suffering a stroke in 1946. Today, his works can be found in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, the Harvard Art Museums, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

CONDITION
Observed in frame. Overall craquelure visible to the naked eye. Most notably to the lower left and right corners. Inspection under UV shows 5% of scattered retouching from lower left corner to the lower right corner.

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