Mrs. Atkinson (Gwen John)

Mrs. Atkinson is a painting (portrait) by Gwen John. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[1]

Mrs. Atkinson
ArtistGwen John 
Yearc. 1897
MediumOil paint, panel
Dimensions30.5 cm (12.0 in) × 31.1 cm (12.2 in)
LocationMetropolitan Museum of Art
Accession No.1979.135.27 
IdentifiersThe Met object ID: 481922

Description and interpretation

The work depicts John's cleaning woman, Mrs. Atkinson, sitting in a room covered with flocked wallpaper.[2] There is a sheep skull on the mantelpiece, though this is not thought to have symbolic meaning.[3]

Simon Schama writes that she is "glancing anxiously sideways, uncertain of what is wanted of her."[2] The painting was exhibited at the New English Art Club in the spring of 1900, marking a strong phase of her career that also saw her Self-portrait on display there about that time.[3] It is considered among the "carefully executed tonal paintings of rather detailed genre subjects" in her first mature oil works.[4]

gollark: It's one of the few bits of C tooling which is slightly sane and useful generally.
gollark: But also don't use OOPy stuff unless you like OOP which is OOP and OOP.
gollark: Actually, find a combination of language and libraries which are *g*o*o*d.
gollark: All no hail C!
gollark: If we got infinite-memory computers, we'd be able to write code as sloppy as we wanted and it'd run fine! Memory-wise, anyway.

References

  1. "Mrs. Atkinson". Metmuseum.org. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 2017-08-10.
  2. Schama, Simon (2016). The Face of Britain: A History of the Nation Through Its Portraits. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190621896.
  3. Taubman, Mary (1985). Gwen John, the artist and her work. Cornell University Press. p. 24.
  4. Gaze, Delia (2013-04-03). Concise Dictionary of Women Artists. Routledge. p. 386. ISBN 9781136599019.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.