22/3/23 - Acquisition - Washington, National Gallery of Art -We underlined it again last autumn (see the news item of 7/11/22), the entry of works by women artists in its collections has been a priority axis of the acquisition policy of the National Gallery of Art in Washington in recent years. Thus, without much surprise, the Gallery announced at the beginning of March the purchase of three new works by women painters who were not yet in its collections: Caterina Angela Pierozzi, Fede Galizia and Gretchen Woodman Rogers. We will return to each of them, starting with the painting of one of the most noted artists of the Boston School.
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- Gretchen Woodman Rogers (1881-1967)
Five O’Clock, c. 1910
Oil on canvas - 81.9 x 73.3 cm
Washington, National Gallery of Art
Photo: Washington, National Gallery of Art - See the image in its page
Presented among the panel of more than twenty 19th and 20th century American paintings assembled by the Vose Galleries in Boston for their latest summer exhibition, Five O’Clock was acquired by the Washington museum thanks to the Funds from James and Christiane Valone, thus independently of the endowment fund exclusively dedicated to the purchase of works by women artists recently set up, the Victoria P. Sant Fund for Women Artists (see the news item of 7/11/22). The painting joins the body of work by Boston School artists already in the collection, including three pictures by Edmund Tarbell, with whom Gretchen Woodman Rogers studied at the Boston Museum School from 1900 to 1907. Described by Tarbell as "the best student I ever had... a genius", Gretchen Woodman Rogers, who made portraits and still lifes her speciality, enjoyed great recognition in her time, exhibiting at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915, where her painting Woman in a Fur Hat, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, won a silver medal. Abandoning her career in the 1930s, she quickly fell into obscurity.
Dated around 1910, the painting that joins Washington was executed just after the artist’s apprenticeship, when she took over the studio of her friend Lilian Westcott Hale at Fenway Studios in Boston’s Back Bay district. Five O’Clock joins a number of works by Hale, who until then seemed to be the only female artist of the Boston School to be represented there, alongside Edmund Tarbell, Frank Weston Benson, William McGregor Paxton and Joseph DeCamp. As the museum states in its press release, the young woman shown seated in profile, wearing a blue and white flounced dress and a hat with an extravagant trim of fruit, flowers and leaves concealing the upper part of her face, has been identified as Kathryn Finn (or Katharine Finn). A portrait of this female model by Edmund Tarbell, Reverie, dated 1913 and held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is known. According to the Washington museum, the late afternoon tea ritual depicted here is to be linked to a social event specific to the city of Boston. In 1899, a "Ladies’ Committee" was formed to support "young ladies studying in Boston away from home". Committee members and students met every afternoon at 5pm for tea. Other representations of this ritual are known, notably by Lilian Westcott Hale.
