Lydia Field Emmet

William Merritt Chase

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

American Art

Title

Lydia Field Emmet

Date

1892

Medium

Oil on canvas

Classification

Painting

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

This work may be in the public domain in the United States. Works created by United States and non-United States nationals published prior to 1923 are in the public domain, subject to the terms of any applicable treaty or agreement. You may download and use Brooklyn Museum images of this work. Please include caption information from this page and credit the Brooklyn Museum. If you need a high resolution file, please fill out our online application form (charges apply). The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties, such as artists or artists' heirs holding the rights to the work. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. The Brooklyn Museum makes no representations or warranties with respect to the application or terms of any international agreement governing copyright protection in the United States for works created by foreign nationals. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.

Have information?

Have information about an artwork? Contact us at

bkmcollections@brooklynmuseum.org.