Artwork Title: Self Portrait

Self Portrait, 1885

Ellen Day Hale

Artwork Title: Self PortraitArtwork Title: Self Portrait
Hale began painting her self-portrait in 1884, working on it at her family's home in Roxbury, Massachusetts and at their summer home in Matunuck, Rhode Island. The painting, Self-Portrait, depicts Hale gazing confidently at the viewer with her right hand dangling slightly over the chair. Dressed in all black, Hale wears a dress with buttons and a fur collar, covered by a loose jacket. Peeking out of a round black hat are Hale's bangs, which at the time were praised as a youthful hairstyle but could also connote promiscuity. Hale seems to be making a fashion statement with her bangs, choice of costume, and the ostrich-feather fan that she holds. When Hale first showed the painting to her instructors in 1885, artist Bouguereau significantly criticized the size and position of the hand and encouraged Hale to make it "prettier". However, Hale did not make any of the suggested changes to the hand, refusing to conform her work to the idealized, academic notions of beauty. The compositional weight of her hand is also notable because it was extremely rare for artists of any gender to portray themselves looking directly at the viewer without any tools to identify their profession. When Hale exhibited Self Portrait in Boston, perhaps for the first time, in 1887, a critic, meaning to compliment her work, described it as displaying "a man's strength in the treatment and handling of her subjects." The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where the self portrait is located, later commented, "Hale's forthright presentation, her strong dark colors, and the direct manner in which she engages the viewer recall the work of one of the French painters she most admired, Edouard Manet. Manet had been known for his confrontational images, strongly painted without subtle nuances of light and shadow." Hale was one of a handful of women of the time, including Elizabeth Nourse and Elizabeth Coffin, who "created compelling self-portraits in which they fearlessly presented themselves as individuals willing to flout social codes and challenge accepted ideas regarding women's place in society. Indeed, the New Women portraits of the 1880s and 1890s are unforgettable interpretations of energetic, self-confident and accomplished women." Hale created and displayed, in her own words, an "original and queer" representation of herself, and this daring assertion of identity marks her approach to the self-portrait as significant. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Day_Hale) Ellen Day Hale was one of an increasing number of professional women artists who flourished in the United States during the decades following the Civil War. The daughter of the prominent Unitarian minister, writer, and abolitionist Edward Everett Hale, Ellen Hale grew up in a family noted for its accomplished women, among them author Harriet Beecher Stowe, reformer Catherine Beecher, and writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Hale first studied art in Boston, taking advantage of the early educational opportunities that were offered to aspiring women artists by William Rimmer. Like most ambitious young painters of her day, Hale completed her training in Paris. She enrolled at the Académie Julian, a program favored by Americans that also offered classes for women, who were not permitted to study at the most prestigious art school in Paris, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, until 1897. In Paris Hale perfected her skills as a figure painter, and this assertive self-portrait demonstrates her success. She selected an unusual horizontal format, silhouetted her figure against an ornamental fabric backdrop, and concentrated her attention on her firmly modeled face and hands. Hale’s forthright presentation, her strong dark colors, and the direct manner in which she engages the viewer recall the work of one of the French painters she most admired, Edouard Manet. Manet had been known for his confrontational images, strongly painted without subtle nuances of light and shadow. A large retrospective exhibition of his work was held in Paris after his death in 1884, a show Hale most likely saw. It was unusual for a woman artist to adopt such bold qualities in her art, for they were often characterized as masculine, and therefore unsuitable. Hale showed this self portrait in Boston in 1887, and when one local critic declared that she displayed “a man’s strength,” he meant it as a compliment. Ellen Day Hale continued to paint throughout her life, later developing a looser, lighter style more influenced by Impressionism. Like many of her Boston colleagues, she did not compromise her dedication to painting the human form, and she often depicted elegant women in interiors. (http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/self-portrait-34803)
Uploaded on Sep 4, 2017 by Suzan Hamer

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