N08802

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Lot 58
  • 58

Frank Weston Benson 1862 - 1951

Estimate
250,000 - 350,000 USD
bidding is closed

Description

  • Frank Weston Benson
  • Portrait of Marjorie Coldwell Westinghouse (Young Girl in a White Dress)
  • signed F.W. Benson and dated 1899, u.l.
  • oil on canvas
  • 44 by 36 in.
  • (111.8 by 91.4 cm)

Provenance

Mr. and Mrs. Henry Herman Westinghouse, 1899
Mrs. Clara Catherine Westinghouse Fletcher (their daughter)
Mr. Herman Westinghouse Fletcher (her son), Pebble Beach, California
Mrs. Jane Laidlaw Fletcher (his wife), Pebble Beach, California
Mr. Peter Saltmarsh Fletcher (her stepson), Pebble Beach, California
Private Collection (his daughter), (sold: Butterfield's and Butterfield's, San Francisco, California, December 20, 1996)
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1996 (acquired at the above sale)
Acquired by the present owners from the above, 1998

Catalogue Note

We are grateful to Hirschl & Adler Galleries for providing the following essay from their archives.

When Frank Weston Benson painted Portrait of Marjorie Coldwell Westinghouse (Young Girl in a White Dress) in 1899, he was an ideal choice for the commission. Not only was Benson a family man himself, married with four children, but he was an artist who publicly identified himself as a painter of children, notably his own, often showing these works at prestigious national exhibits including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the National Academy of Design in New York, and the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh.

Portrait of Marjorie Coldwell Westinghouse (Young Girl in a White Dress) is a quintessential example of Benson's work as a studio portraitist. The child is wearing the kind of white dress that Benson painted repeatedly, an opportunity, in the tradition of Claude Monet, for a tour de force exploration of the qualities of color and light reflected in the deceptive simplicity of white. A look through Benson's oeuvre of 1895 to 1915 confirms the artist's fascination with girls and women in romantic white frocks.

The Westinghouse family of Pittsburgh was prominent and wealthy. Their fortune derived from the inventiveness, mechanical aptitude, and business acumen of George Westinghouse (1846–1914), the inventor of the railroad air brake, and his younger brother and business associate, Henry Herman Westinghouse (1853–1933), also an inventor and engineer, and the father of Miss Marjorie Westinghouse depicted in this portrait. Benson might very well have come to the attention of the Westinghouse family when he served on the award jury of the Second Annual Exhibition of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1898, where he also showed four portraits of children.

Henry Herman Westinghouse commissioned this portrait of his daughter, Marjorie Coldwell Westinghouse (1895–1909), in 1899, when Marjorie was four years old. The portrait remained in their possession and was eventually given to Marjorie's sister, Clara Catherine Westinghouse Fletcher (b. 1883). The painting remained in the Fletcher family until 1996.