5 Women from the Gibbes

When Friday 5 asked Angela Mack, the curator of the Gibbes Museum in Charleston, to share some of the treasures from the museum’s collection, Mack noticed something surprising among her picks: Most were images of women.

We just love a good theme...

Mrs. Robert Gilmor Jr.
Thomas Sully (American)
Early 19th century
Baltimore art collector Robert Gilmor Jr. married into a prominent Charleston family when he wed Sarah Reeve Ladson in 1807. His bride was considered one of the most beautiful and fashionable women of her time, making her prime subject material for Sully and other famous artists of the early 18th century.

In addition to this painting, the Gibbes’ collection also includes a representation of Mrs. Gilmor by sculptor Horatio Greenough (Editor's note: It's in the video). This painting is currently one of two from the Gibbes being exhibited among 130 works of American art on traveling display in the People’s Republic of China.

The Green Fan
Robert Henri (American)
1912
The Ohio-born Henri returned to the United States from Paris in 1889 and became an influential arts educator, eventually opening his own institute. In 1910 he was instrumental in arranging the Independent exhibition in New York, a collection of European modernist paintings that laid the ground work for the paradigm-shifting Armory Show of 1913.

Much of Henri’s best work was executed between 1906 and 1914, a period in which he was exhibited multiple times at the Gibbes. This piece was purchased from the artist by the museum after a 1913 installation here.

Sarah Remembered
Leo Twiggs (American)
1997
This evocative piece offers up a childhood image of a beloved ancestor, the last woman in her family to be born into slavery.

Because the artist never met her, she is depicted in hazy form, as if in a faded keepsake, with a “memory box” of objects associated with the family’s stories about her embedded in the frame below.

Twiggs, a native of St. Stephen in Berkeley County, earned degrees from Claflin College, New York University and the University of Georgia, and is one of South Carolina’s most famous and respected contemporary artists.

April (The Green Gown)
Childe Hassam (American)
1920
Childe Hassam was an avant-garde impressionist celebrated for his city street scenes and American flag series. He exhibited at the history-making Armory Show of 1913 but eventually joined a group of prominent artists who refused to to exhibit in juried shows.

This striking piece, long referred to as “The Green Gown,” was something of mystery to art historians until recent scholarship determined that the subject is Hassam’s mother, April, as a young woman. Her unusual gown? A maternity dress. And the child in her womb? The artist.

Editor's note: Kinda gives new meaning to the term "With Childe."

Veiled Lady
Pietro Rossi (Italian)
1882
The exquisite beauty of the “Veiled Lady” is heightened by the fact that so little is known about it. The artist was obviously quite skilled, but the only information ever uncovered about him is that in 1856 he participated in an exhibition in the Italian city of Novara, north of Milan.

The piece gives the illusion of diaphanous drapery, a popular theme in the late 19th century, and has been a beloved part of the museum’s collection since its donation in 1910.

Comments

[Pam]

Cool.