"Lady with a Bowl of Violets," Lilla Cabot Perry, c. 1910.
Lydia Cabot (1848-1933) was born into a Boston society family, and in her youth spent time with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Louisa May Alcott, both family friends. Her family were passionate abolitionists during the Civil War and worked to protect runaway slaves.
After the war, she married linguist and academic Thomas Sergeant Perry, and then began her artistic training at the age of 36. She became a protegee of Claude Monet and friend of Camille Pissarro, and established herself as an American Impressionist.
Although she never had the fame other Impressionists had, she formulated her own version of it and helped stir up the staid Boston art community. Several years' residence in Japan, when her husband was teaching at a university there, also influenced her. She started going by her nickname, Lilla.
Here we have an unknown young woman, sitting serenely in a rich setting. We have part of a Japanese print and the bowl of violets present but carefully cropped off, a very Japanese choice. It's a lovely, serene picture, typical of her work.
From the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.
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