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Portrait Study of a Child

Alternate TitleChild with Violin
Alternate TitlePortrait of Alice
Artist Lilla Cabot Perry (American, 1848 - 1933)
Date1891
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 60 1/8 x 36 1/8 inches (152.72 x 91.76 cm)
Framed: 67 x 44 x 2 1/2 inches (170.18 x 111.76 x 6.35 cm)
Credit LinePurchase: The Ever Glades Fund
Object number2003.1
SignedSigned and dated upper left: lilla · cabot · perry · / · 1891 ·
On View
On view
Gallery Location
  • 221
Collections
DescriptionThis vertical painting shows a somber, serious-looking young girl with brown hair in a blue dress with white trim holding a violin at waist level. She stands at approximately three-quarter view and looks out directly at the viewer. The background is neutral and non-descript in a deep shade of grey.Gallery Label
Portrait Study of a Child presents Lilla Cabot Perry's poised seven-year-old daughter holding a violin. Confronting the viewer directly and by herself, this likeness of Alice Perry, unlike more sentimental depictions of children of the period, suggests the growing professionalism of women's creative endeavors throughout the late 19th century.

An elite Bostonian, Perry gravitated toward an artistic career beginning in the 1870s and responded to wide-ranging influences.  The firm figure drawing evident in Portrait Study of a Child suggests her Parisian academic training, while her focus on children reveals the impact of painter Mary Cassatt. Furthermore, the portrait's restrained palette indicates Perry's admiration of James McNeill Whistler's unconventionally poetic approach to painting.
Published References
“Splendid Art Show by the ‘Society,’” New York Herald, 25 April 1891, 6; “Exhibitions of the Society of American Artists and School of Drawing and Painting at Museum of Fine Arts,” Boston Sunday Globe, 7 June 1891, 19; review of the Thirteenth Exhibition of the
Society of American Artists, 1891, Perry clipping files, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York; Catalogue of the Thirteenth Exhibition of the Society of American Artists, exh. cat. (New York: Art Interchange Press, 1891), 35; Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association Eighteenth Triennial Exhibition Catalogue, exh. cat. (Boston: Fine Art Department, Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association 1892), 7 (as Child with Violin); “The Fine Arts. Massachusetts Art for the World’s Fair—Figures and Portraits,” Boston Evening Transcript, 19 January 1893, 5; “Art in Boston.—The Massachusetts Exhibit for the World’s Fair,” Studio 8 (25 February 1893), 110 (as Portrait of a Child with a Violin); “Pictures Accepted in Boston,” Art Amateur 28 (March 1893), 116 (as Portrait of a Child); Report of the Eighteenth Triennial Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association (Boston: Press of Rockwell and Churchill, 1893), 171 (as Child with Violin); Catalogue of the Massachusetts Fine Art Exhibit (Boston: Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, 1893), unpaginated (as Portrait of a Child with a Violin); World’s Columbian Exposition Official Catalogue Fine Arts, exh. cat. (Chicago: W. B. Conkey Company, 1893), 24 (as Portrait of Alice); World’s Columbian Exposition Official Publications: Revised Catalogue Department of
Fine Arts with Index of Exhibitors (Chicago: W. B. Conkey Company, 1893), 73 (as Portrait of Alice); Elizabeth Broun, “American Painting and Sculpture in the Fine Arts Building of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893,” Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1976, 272 (as Portrait of Alice); Nicole Plett, “Soft- spoken Collector Champions Women’s Art,” New Mexican (Santa Fe), 22 April 1983, Pasatiempo sec., 22 (as Child [Alice] with Violin); Suzanne Deats, “Whistler’s Sister,” Santa Fe Reporter, 20 April 1983, 19 (as Child [Alice] with Violin); Alma S. King, Lilla Cabot Perry: Days to Remember, exh. cat. (Santa Fe: Santa Fe East Gallery, 1983), unpaginated, cover (as Child [Alice] with Violin); Lisa Michelle Ward, “Lilla Cabot Perry and the Emergence of the Professional Woman Artist in America, 1885–1905,” M.A. thesis, University of Texas, Austin, 1985, 50–51, 79, 112 (as Child [Alice] with Violin); Jo Ann Lewis, “Lilla Perry: Impressions of a Portraitist: Women’s Museum’s Flawed Retrospective,” Washington Post, 14 November 1990, B12; John Gill, “A Painter’s Family Album,” Victoria, November 1990, 122; Meredith Martindate et al., Lilla Cabot Perry: An American Impressionist, exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1990), 30, 36, 38, 103n45, 144–45 (as Portrait Study of a Child [Alice Perry]); Revisiting the White City: American Art at the 1893 World’s Fair (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, National Portrait
Gallery, 1993), 303 (as Portrait of Alice [Portrait Study of a Child {Alice Perry}]); Marcia Lynn Soderman-Olson, “Reconstructing Lilla Cabot Perry (1889–1933): A Study in Class and Gender,” Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 2000, 1:133–34, 170n2 (as Portrait Study of a Child [Alice Perry with Violin]).
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