WOMAN IN ART
beam on you, glowing cheeks above the red sweater. He is robust, yet there is tenderness and thoughtfulness in face and bearing.
"In the Studio" we see a typical girl seated girl-fashion with a black pussy contented in her lap. The child's wavy hair is beautiful and beautifully painted, catching glints of sunlight now and again, where it falls over her shoulders. She is reposeful and sweet. Behind her a large mirror gives a glimpse of the artist who is recording this picture of somebody's childhood. Mrs. Ellen Emmet Rand has a strong gift of characterization. She catches the little things, unconscious mannerisms, if you please, that accent the individuality to the point of naturalism, as distinct from "realism."
This is exemplified in her portrait of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, painted in 1904. The great American sculptor is represented sitting, giving his strong profile, the face in meditative mood. The strong, sinewy right hand is drawn back on the arm of the chair; the other arm unconsciously gives poise to the hand that toys with the chain of his eye glasses. Though never having seen the man, it is safe to say that at first glance at the portrait one would say, "How natural!"
In 1911 Miss Ellen Emmet was showing twenty-three portraits at the MacBeth Gallery, a most unusual showing of some quite unusual men, and nearly all were of men. The Hon. Levi P. Morton, and the Hon. Joseph H. Choate in academic gown, are strongly painted yet with the refinement and penetration their characters express. The suggestive and detailed environment of the two just mentioned, and the library in which is seen Dr. Louis Tiffany, are painted in subdued light from which the figures stand out most effectively.
Miss Emmet's portrait of Benjamin Altman, donor of his private collection of art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, in 1913, is another of her successes. It is life-size and a seated figure, the gift of the executors of the Altman Estate, and is signed Ellen Emmet Rand, 1914. The background of this, as of others just mentioned, and that of Dr. Billings, is a welcome change from the non-luminous ones to be seen even in our own day. The characterization that the artist has for years been striving for is manifested in her portraits, which are some of the best that American art has produced.
Ellen Emmet was born in San Francisco, California, March 4, 1876. She studied in New York and Paris; received a silver medal for her work at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904; a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915; a bronze medal at Buenos Aires Exhibit in 1910; and the Beck Gold Medal from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1922.
Rarely are two sisters gifted and equipped for the same art, but Emmet
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