| Afternoon Tea | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Richard E. Miller |
| Year | 1910 |
| Type | Oil paint on canvas |
| Dimensions | 100 cm× 81 cm(39.5 in× 32 in) |
| Location | Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis |
Afternoon Tea is a 1910 oil painting by American artist Richard E. Miller, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Like many of Miller's paintings, it depicts women in a sunny scene, filled with flowers, depicted in his Impressionist style with a distinct flavor of Japonism. [1]
Afternoon Tea has been lauded as one of Miller's best paintings, "a confident, mature work and an absolute knockout in coloristic power." [2] He applied vibrant colors like bright reds, greens, and purples with artistic license, driven by decorative concerns rather than objective truth. By framing the two women with a Japanese parasol, Miller created a focal point that unified the disparate colors, patterns, and textures he juxtaposed so boldly, a hallmark of his particular style of Impressionism. The parasol was a device Miller would use over and over again, enamored of its "circular shape, ribbed structure, [and] colorful surface designs." The prominent brushstrokes are also a key feature of Miller's mature works. [3]
This painting was produced when Miller was at an important artistic crossroads, shifting from academic portraits to more animated images of contemporary women. The real subject, though, was paint itself, and the joy he derived from its manipulation. [4]
Miller was a member of the Giverny Group, a group of American Impressionists who settled in Northern France to be near Claude Monet. They preferred to produce paintings of women in sun-drenched landscapes, emphasizing bold contrasts and patterns. They, Miller included, embraced whole-heartedly the mania for Japanese aesthetics that swept France at the turn of the twentieth century. He filled his studio with fans, kimonos, ceramics, and other souvenirs. World War I dislodged them from the region; Miller returned to America in 1914. [5]
Afternoon Tea was vigorously pursued by IMA curator Ellen Lee to flesh out the museum's American Impressionism collection. Her research confirmed that it was a long-lost Miller masterpiece mentioned in the artist's scrapbook but not seen for years. Thus, she convinced IMA benefactors Jane and Andrew Paine to bid on it on December 4, 1997, at Christie's New York auction house, in the middle of an exciting week that also saw the museum acquire an important (and costly) Belgian Neo-Impressionist painting and an early Netherlandish triptych. [2] The final price was $1,047,500, considerably higher than the initial estimate of $500,000–$700,000. [4] It is currently on view as a promised gift in the American gallery with the accession number 1997.139. [5]
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles, and inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s.
American Impressionism was a style of painting related to European Impressionism and practiced by American artists in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century through the beginning of the twentieth. The style is characterized by loose brushwork and vivid colors with a wide array of subject matters but focusing on landscapes and upper-class domestic life.
Neo-Impressionism is a term coined by French art critic Félix Fénéon in 1886 to describe an art movement founded by Georges Seurat. Seurat's most renowned masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, marked the beginning of this movement when it first made its appearance at an exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris. Around this time, the peak of France's modern era emerged and many painters were in search of new methods. Followers of Neo-Impressionism, in particular, were drawn to modern urban scenes as well as landscapes and seashores. Science-based interpretation of lines and colors influenced Neo-Impressionists' characterization of their own contemporary art. The Pointillist and Divisionist techniques are often mentioned in this context, because they were the dominant techniques in the beginning of the Neo-Impressionist movement.
Frederick Carl Frieseke was an American Impressionist painter who spent most of his life as an expatriate in France. An influential member of the Giverny art colony, his paintings often concentrated on various effects of dappled sunlight.
Pennsylvania Impressionism was an American Impressionist movement of the first half of the 20th century that was centered in and around Bucks County, Pennsylvania, particularly the town of New Hope. The movement is sometimes referred to as the "New Hope School" or the "Pennsylvania School" of landscape painting.
The terms California Impressionism and California Plein-Air Painting describe the large movement of 20th century California artists who worked out of doors, directly from nature in California, United States. Their work became popular in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California in the first three decades after the turn of the 20th century. Considered to be a regional variation on American Impressionism, the California Impressionists are a subset of the California Plein-Air School.
Tonal Impressionism was an artistic style of "mood" paintings with simplified compositions, done in a limited range of colors, as with Tonalist works, but using the brighter, more chromatic palette of Impressionism. An exhibition titled "Tonal Impressionism" was curated by the art historian Harry Muir Kurtzworth for the Los Angeles Art Association Gallery at the Los Angeles Central Library in June 1937 with the works of a number of prominent California artists. In recent years, the term has also been used to describe a non-linear approach to painting where the subject is massed in with tonal values without the use of underdrawing.
Richard E. Miller was an American Impressionist painter and a member of the Giverny Colony of American Impressionists. Miller was primarily a figurative painter, known for his paintings of women posing languidly in interiors or outdoor settings. Miller grew up in St. Louis, studied in Paris, and then settled in Giverny. Upon his return to America, he settled briefly in Pasadena, California and then in the art colony of Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he remained for the rest of his life. Miller was a member of the National Academy of Design in New York and an award-winning painter in his era, honored in both France and Italy, and a winner of France's Legion of Honor. Over the past several decades, he has been the subject of a retrospective exhibition and his work has been reproduced extensively in exhibition catalogs and featured in a number of books on American Impressionism.
Decorative Impressionism is an art historical term that is credited to the art writer Christian Brinton, who first used it in 1911. Brinton titled an article on the American expatriate painter Frederick Carl Frieseke, one of the members of the famous Giverny Colony of American Impressionists, "The Decorative Impressionist."
Preparing for the Matinee is an oil painting by American artist Edmund C. Tarbell, created in 1907. It is currently part of the permanent collection at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
The Love Song is an oil painting by American artist Norman Rockwell, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. It originally appeared in the Ladies Home Journal in December 1926. It depicts two elderly musicians, on flute and clarinet, playing a duet while a young girl takes a break from sweeping to listen. The painting's title appears on the sheet music from which the musicians play.
The Two Sisters, also known as The Serruys Sisters is an 1894 oil painting by Belgian artist Georges Lemmen, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana. It uses pointillism to depict the sisters Jenny and Berthe Serruys.
The Channel of Gravelines, Petit Fort Philippe is a pointillist painting by French artist Georges Seurat, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana. Painted in 1890, the year before his death, it depicts a harbor in the small French port of Gravelines. Described as "wistful and poetic," it is one of the treasures of the IMA.
The Flageolet Player on the Cliff is an 1889 oil painting by French artist Paul Gauguin, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana. It depicts a Breton couple on a narrow path precipitously overlooking the Atlantic.
The House of the Deaf Woman and the Belfry at Eragny is an 1886 oil painting by French artist Camille Pissarro, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is a view of Pissarro's neighbor's yard in Eragny, created during his brief period of experimentation with pointillism.
The Banks of the Oise near Pontoise is an 1873 oil painting by French artist Camille Pissarro, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana. It depicts the river Oise near the market town of Pontoise.
The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist is an oil painting by Italian artist Giovanni Francesco Bezzi, also known as Nosadella, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana. Painted roughly 1550-1560, it depicts Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and John in a powerful, Mannerist style.
Untitled (The Birth) is a 1938 tempera painting by American artist Jacob Lawrence, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana. Depicting a scene of childbirth in flat, geometric forms and bright colors, it is very much a product of the Harlem Renaissance.
Lise with a Parasol is an oil on canvas painting by French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, created in 1867 during his early Salon period. The full-length painting depicts model Lise Tréhot posing in a forest. She wears a white muslin dress and holds a black lace parasol to shade her from the sunlight, which filters down through the leaves, contrasting her face in the shadow and her body in the light, highlighting her dress rather than her face. After having several paintings rejected by the Salon, Renoir's Lise with a Parasol was finally accepted and exhibited in May 1868.
The American artist Mary Cassatt painted The Cup of Tea in Paris ca. 1879–1881. The painting depicts Mary's sister Lydia Cassatt in a typical, upper class-Parisian ritual of afternoon tea. Scholars have observed that Cassatt's choice to employ vivid colors, loose brushstrokes, and unique perspective to portray the scene makes it a quintessentially Impressionist painting.