It’s by a particular artist that we love, or in a favorite style or medium, or even from that period of time we might feel like we should have been born in.
But sometimes it’s not so clear. It doesn’t check the usual boxes and requires a bit of musing to figure out its draw. When I can—which is not often—I try to avoid this kind of mental analysis. It feel sometimes like there are so few positive mysteries in this world that one shouldn’t disturb the precarious state of those we have, but Cecilia Beaux’s Dorothea and Francesca has enchanted me for a while, and perhaps against my better judgment, I wanted to sort out its particular attraction.
Cecilia Beaux
Perhaps the most obvious in-road is that it’s a portrait, and I am indeed a sucker for portraits. I love looking at faces and expressions, the way a subject is fashioned—their clothing, a telling gesture or posture, the often symbolic accoutrements. It’s an endlessly fascinating means of identity building, and one that, to varying degrees, artist, subject, and even the person who commissioned the portrait contribute to. And yet Beaux’s over-life-sized depiction of these two sisters is hardly a portrait in any traditional sense. As critic Sebastian Smee wrote in his Washington Post ode to the work, “we don’t see enough of their faces” for that.
The younger sister’s face is turned down, concentrating on the steps she is willing her feet to do, while the elder girl’s features are almost entirely covered by her frizzy hair. They don’t look at us at all; rather we feel like we are looking in on a private, intimate moment. But of course this is no candid photo. Beaux must have worked on this for weeks, maybe months, coming back to the girls’ home, or they to her studio. She decided to capture them this way, but why? What prompted this moment? Were the girls bored while waiting for the artist to begin their session? Was Dorothea trying to keep her younger sister quiet and entertained? Perhaps Beaux had seen them dancing before—had she come into the portrait with this idea? I cannot help but love this oddity of a painting that is both portrait and not portrait, that presents as many questions as answers.
I also cannot not admit that the fact that this was painted by a woman intrigues me. (Of course, I also cannot imagine that a man, certainly not in that time and cultural climate, would have captured such a tender moment between two young girls. Perhaps it’s the lack of a defined background, but there’s something that makes this moment feel almost like a memory conjured in the mind.) Yes, as a proud feminist, I confess that knowing an artwork was created by a woman, especially at a time when that was more anomalous, makes me look longer, wonder more.
Cecilia Beaux, about 1888
Courtesy of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
Beaux is indeed a fascinating subject who deserves many more words than I have knowledge or space. She was an ambitious and highly successful artist in her day. She became the first woman instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and received numerous commissions to paint prestigious people including Eleanor Roosevelt, who also honored Beaux in 1893 as “the American woman who had made the greatest contribution to the culture of the world.” The world!
Cecilia Beaux. Courtesy of the National Academy of Design, New York City
But that was not her only accolade; she received many in her day, including being awarded a gold medal for lifetime achievement by the National Institute of Arts and Letters. While obviously accomplished and lauded, she was also, perhaps inevitably, compared to the preeminent American portraitist of the time, John Singer Sargent, but notably sometimes more favorably. It is said that a critic reporting on a show in which both Sargent’s and Beaux’s work was shown commented, “The ordinary ones are signed John Sargent; the best are signed Cecilia Beaux.”
Sargent presents another connection to why the work attracts me, but in a roundabout way. My mother, who is a painter, a portraitist mostly, absolutely adores Sargent, and I remember her pointing out to me long ago how some elements of his portraits—often the face—are so meticulously rendered they are almost photorealistic, but then other elements—a highlight of a gown, even a hand—are just smears of paint, just sitting on the surface of the canvas.
On close inspection, they appear as abstract marks that almost break the illusion of depth, but somehow, almost magically, your brain reads them as one with the picture. Not a blob of white on a canvas, but a glimmering reflection on a luminous gown.
You can see these seemingly incongruous paint handling techniques in Beaux as well. Take a look at Dorothea’s dress, particularly at the hem, or the highlights of bright pink on Francesca’s collar and sleeve. I adore looking for these bits that shouldn’t make sense, that should totally shatter the illusion, but that instead enhance it.
I also rather enjoy pondering what might be really going on in the heads of these girls. Certainly this could be read as a beautifully tender moment between two sisters: a young woman whose sisterly feelings verge on the maternal, and a younger sister who idolizes and adores her older sister. As a sister myself, even as one who does truly adore my sibling, I still feel like that is one of the less likely versions of what is truly happening. Sometimes I imagine that Dorothea actually resents her younger sister, who is lavished with greater attention. Maybe this was just supposed to be a portrait of Francesca but she was too fidgety, and Dorothea’s been pulled away from what she would prefer to be doing to perform sisterly devotion. I can almost see in their clasped hands just a little too vigorous a grip from Dorothea and imagine all that frizzy hair hiding her muttering quietly to Francesca how she always ruins everything. (Dorothea is clearly a teen after all.)
Or maybe it’s Francesca who is irritated because this is supposed to be her moment to shine, to be the center of attention, and yet her older sister is asked to join because she is the better dancer. She is the better everything. I’m not sure why my mind goes to a scene of resentment and internalized conflict (perhaps it’s my seemingly forever-feuding children), but there seem to be so many more interesting, complex, and actually common dynamics lurking in the shadows of this scene that repeated visits and sustained looking rewards.
I often feel like overanalyzing something ruins it, that pulling a whole into parts tears the magic into boring sensible pieces, and I feared that would happen here too. But I suppose that’s not always true. Sometimes the more you ponder, the more possibilities you encounter, the more slippery it all becomes. And with Beaux, while I might have identified some elements that individually attract me, they attract me because they don’t have answers or shouldn’t make sense, and in the end they still must come together in a mysterious brew of attraction—like the dissonant strokes of paint that should fracture a canvas but magically make it sing.
—Lauren Schultz, executive director, Communications
