GIBRAN, KAHLIL | Portrait of Adele Watson

GIBRAN, KAHLIL

Portrait of Adele Watson

Graphite on board (32 1/2 x 23 1/2 in.; 596 x 457 mm), inscribed and signed at lower left "To my friend Adele Watson | Kahlil Gibran | 1926"; Board uniformly browned, tape to extreme edges, closed tear to right edge (not affecting image). 

Gibran's tender rendering of his friend and fellow Symbolist

Throughout his career, Gibran painted over 700 pictures, watercolors, and drawings, and he remains one of the greatest novelists of modern Arab and American literature. Notably, his most renowned novel, The Prophet has never been out of publication since its first edition in 1923 and has been translated in over 50 languages.

Adele Watson (1857-1947) was born in Toledo, Ohio, and went on to study at the New York Art Students League before traveling to Europe and studying under the French artist Raphaël Collin. Gibran and Watson shared a preoccupation with the beauty and power of nature, and their friendship appears to have had a profound impact on her art, which became increasingly influenced by symbolism and mysticism. Her mature compositions explore the merging of the human figure into the western landscape (she was a longtime resident of Pasadena), calling to mind artists such as Arthur B. Davies and William Blake.