COLLECTION NAME:
Visual Resources Teaching Collection
mediaCollectionId
ArtArtHiAAH~7~7
Visual Resources Teaching Collection
Collection
true
Image Record ID:
aahi0001870
image_record_id
aahi0001870
Image Record ID
false
Work Title (display):
Family Portrait II
Image Title:
full view
Work Dates (display):
1933
Work Dates type:
creation
Work Creator (display):
Florine Stettheimer (American, 1871-1944)
Work Creator gender:
female
work_creator_or_agent_gender
female
Work Creator gender
false
Work Creator notes (display):
American painter and society hostess. Throughout her youth, Stettheimer travelled frequently to Europe with her sisters and mother, spending months at a time in Germany, Italy, Switzerland and France. At the age of 21 she enrolled at the Art Students League in New York and studied painting with Kenyon Cox. While her sister Ettie worked toward a PhD in philosophy at the University of Freiburg, she continued her studies in art in Berlin, Munich and Stuttgart, where she encountered painters such as Ferdinand Hodler, Gustav Klimt and Franz von Stuck. She also enthusiastically followed the Ballet Russes, with its sets and costumes by Léon Bakst. At the outbreak of World War I she returned New York, where her family maintained a residence on the Upper West Side at West 76th Street, and there, in collaboration with her sisters and mother, hosted cultural gatherings on a regular basis. The paintings she had produced in Europe were used to decorate the house, which served as an important site of convergence for European and American vanguard artists. Marcel Duchamp, Charles Demuth, Albert Gleizes, Marsden Hartley, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Morton Schamberg, Alfred Stieglitz, Carl Van Vechten (18801964) and others frequented the Stettheimer's salon. In 1916 Stettheimer exhibited some of her Symbolist-inflected work at M. Knoedler & Company, recreating a domestic environment for the occasion within the gallery. She sold no work and the reviews were mixed. She never showed her work in a public gallery again but continued to paint and display work in her home and the studio she maintained in the Beaux Arts Building on West 40th Street. Freed from commercial and critical imperatives, her paintingsatirical tributes to the members of her art-world circlebecame increasingly fey and fantastical. Virgil Thomson was taken with her work and invited Stettheimer to design the sets and costumes for the opera Four Saints in Three Acts, which he was creating in collaboration with Gertrude Stein. Stettheimer began work on this project in 1929. In the same year America's first museum of modern art opened in New York (an event that inspired Stettheimer's painting Cathedrals of Art). Four Saints in Three Acts opened five years later at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT, and was immediately acknowledged as a landmark event in American modernism. Gospel singers from Harlem performed Thomson's score, which borrowed its cadences from Stein's libretto. Stettheimer embellished a backdrop with swags of cellophane that made the scene sparkle under the lighting. The premier performance drew the major cultural leaders of the period, including Alfred H. Barr. Finally, at the age of 63, Stettheimer's work received public acclaim. After her death in 1944, Duchamp pressured the Museum of Modern Art to organize a major retrospective. The show, which opened in New York in 1946, travelled to Chicago and San Francisco. http://www.groveart… accessed 2008-06-16>
Work Style Period:
Modernist
work_styleperiod
Modernist
Work Style Period
false
Work Style Period:
20th century
work_styleperiod
20th century
Work Style Period
false
Work Subject:
women (female humans)
subject
women (female humans)
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
figures
subject
figures
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
flowers (plants)
subject
flowers (plants)
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
families (kinship groups)
subject
families (kinship groups)
Work Subject
false
Work Worktype:
installations (visual works)
work_type
installations (visual works)
Work Worktype
false
Work Worktype:
paintings (visual works)
work_type
paintings (visual works)
Work Worktype
false
Work Category (VRC classification):
paintings
work_category__ucbaahvrc_classification_
paintings
Work Category (VRC classification)
false
Work Material and Technique (display):
oil paint on canvas
Work Measurements (display):
117 cm (H) x 164 cm (W)
Work Location (Repository or Site) name:
Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.)
Work Location (Repository or Site) role:
repository
Work Location (Repository or Site) refid:
8.1956
Work Location (Repository or Site) refid type:
accession
Work Location (Geographic) name:
New York, New York
Image Rights (display):
© Museum of Modern Art, New York. Licensed for educational use via Scholars Resource: Davis Art Images
Work Rights (display):
unknown
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Holding Institution:
University of Colorado at Boulder
Collection:
Art and Art History Visual Resources Collection
Collection info and contact:
For information about this collection, see