EDMUND CHARLES TARBELL | MOTHER AND CHILD IN A BOAT

The artist

Granddaughter of the above (by descent)

Mary Jo Cannon, by 1980

Private collection (by descent)

Adelson Galleries, Inc., New York

Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2004

Patricia Jobe Pierce, Edmund Tarbell and the Boston School of Painting (1889-1980), Hingham, Massachusetts, 1980, p. 206

Mother and Child in a Boat was painted in New Castle, New Hampshire, where the artist spent his summers. The present work depicts Tarbell's wife, Emeline, and daughter, Josephine, who was born in 1890. A larger version of this composition executed in the same year exists in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In discussing the finished painting Janet L. Comey wrote, "He [the artist] rendered the shimmering of light on the water and the dappled sunlight on the rowboat and costumes with strokes of pure color." (Erica E. Hirshler, et. al., Impressionsim Abroad: Boston and French Painting, London, 2005, p. 123) The same lively description can be applied to the energetic brushstrokes of pastel hues seen in the present work.