Lydia Field Emmet
Brooklyn Museum photograph
Object Label
One of the most striking portraits by the leading New York painted William Merritt Chase, this dramatic likeness of his talented student and later the successful portait painter Lydia Field Emmet (1866–1952) was an homage to the portraitists he most admired: the Spanish Baroque master Diego Velázquez and the nineteenth-century painters James McNeil Whistler and Edouard Manet. Drawing particularly on the vigorous painterly realism of Veláquez, Chase structured the likeness with strikingly opposed areas of light and dark, and employed such brilliant passages of the painterly freedom as the trailing pink bow of the "Van Dyckian" Baroque-inspired gown. Lydia Emmet's direct gaze and bold pose, with her elbow assertively aimed at the the viewer, speak to her spirit of independence, at the time she was preparing a mural entitled Art, Science, and Literature for the Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Caption
William Merritt Chase American, 1849–1916. Lydia Field Emmet, 1892. Oil on canvas, 72 x 36 1/8 in. (182.9 x 91.8 cm) FRAME : 85 1/4" h x 51" x 5 3/8". Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist, 15.316. No known copyright restrictions (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 15.316_SL3.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Lydia Field Emmet
Date
1892
Medium
Oil on canvas
Classification
Dimensions
72 x 36 1/8 in. (182.9 x 91.8 cm) FRAME : 85 1/4" h x 51" x 5 3/8"
Signatures
Signed lower left: "Wm M. Chase."
Credit Line
Gift of the artist
Accession Number
15.316
Rights
No known copyright restrictions
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