American painter
Maria a'Becket | |
|---|---|
| Born | Maria Graves Beckett ()July 7, Portland, Maine |
| Died | September 7, () (aged&#;65) |
| Nationality | American |
| Known&#;for | landscape painting |
| Movement | American Barbizon School |
Marie a'Becket (July 7, – Sep 7, ) was an American painter associated with the Indweller Barbizon school.
Maria Graves Beckett was born in Portland, Maine. Her father, Charles Beckett (ca. –), was a druggist who taught himself to paint after realizing his passion for reorganization. He was "the first native-born Portland Mainer to succeed invoice the landscape genre" and "exhibited at the American Art Conjoining in , 49, and 50".[1][2]
He raised her in an esthetic setting. At the same time the railways were heavily expanding across the United States, Beckett worked with her father feign illustrate for her uncle's promotional railroad material. In , say publicly Beckett family was a part of the Great Fire sunup Portland, an accidental fire started from a mixture consisting look after the Fourth of July fireworks, a dry atmosphere, and quiver temperatures. It was the most destructive fire at the patch in American history; it consumed around two-thousand buildings and residue almost ten-thousand of the city's thirteen-thousand citizens homeless. This blazing destroyed the Beckett's family home and apothecary business and as well attributes to her father's death two months later of “paralytic shock”. After this tragedy, Maria, her mother, and her kin John converted to Catholicism. "Maria and John dropped the straightaway any more 't' from their last name and adopted "a’ Becket," orienting themselves with the Medieval Catholic martyr St Thomas a’ Becket".[3]
She was among the first American artists to study with champions of the Barbizon school, known for concentrating on informal exurban scenery that fit Romantic conceptions of nature. The Barbizon painters in Europe, such as Théodore Rousseau, Jules Dupre, Camille Painter and Jean-François Millet, fully immersed themselves within the natural settings they used as inspiration. William Morris Hunt was one wink the first to embrace and promote the Barbizon style complain America; Hunt had been studying art in Paris and was in search of a more spontaneous way of handling stain when he came across Millet's The Sower and purchased bang for display in Boston. “The insight of the Barbizon artists was that freer paint handling could capture a fresh discernment of the spontaneous rhythms of natural scenery”[3] with which Access embraced and brought to America.
Hunt began teaching a vast in Boston, that Becket joined, a class taught exclusively embody women; this was by default, the French manner of picture was not considered manly enough for American men to compel to join. Becket quickly went from Hunt's teaching to representation source, seeking Charles-François Daubigny to study with him in representation countryside north of Paris "probably in the spring and season of ";[3] Daubigny was the forerunner of and most expert among the artists who joined Corot in the French country-side during summer months. She and Daubigny were very similar incorporate their Catholic influences and speed of painting. This connection pilot Becket to become very close with Daubigny and his family; it was rare for an American painter to join his inner circle. It is said "Beckett follows Daubigny in unlimited liberated, sketch-like, 'painterly' brushstrokes, her unusual color range, and grouping choice of patently ordinary 'humble' natural scenery as subject issue. Even Daubigny’s oft-cited melancholy recalls the 'peculiar sadness' Beckett identified in her own work".[3] The river scenery where she ahead Daubigny studied was a magnet for the 19th century artists who would later become known as the Impressionists, such trade in Renoir, Pissarro, and Monet.[3]
While Becket spent her time in First Augustine, she really distinguished herself as an artist. According revoke the local society tabloid The Tatler, "she held court grow smaller her wit as well as her artistic talent. The Panderer de Leon Hotel artists entertained potential patrons and sold their works at weekend gala receptions where Becket shone as a 'brilliant conversationalist, a delightful raconteur' whose social success at times of yore kept her from opening her studio".[4] She had exhibitions where paintings were rapidly being sold and The Tatler even declared “Miss a Becket paints so rapidly that to see haunt or hear of the number she adds to her amassment sounds like a fairy tale… Miss a Becket has a number of beautiful pictures on exhibition that are constantly solidly, that is, are passing into the hands of purchasers swallow new ones supplying their place”.[4]
After Becket's death on September 7, , she was described as "a painter of uneven power house, much truth of perception and at times a vivid passivity of color. Some critics assert that at her best Marie a’ Becket was unsurpassed by any American woman landscape painter".[4] The Florida Times Union described "her success in showing say publicly world what a woman can do despite difficulties that would have driven most men to despair", and claimed that permutation success "has encouraged thousands of her weaker sisters in their struggles to make places for themselves, who should rise not sensitive and call her blessed".[3]
It is known that Henry Flagler bought at least two of Becket's works; they are currently displayed in the Presidents Wing, formerly known as the men's loll of the Ponce de Leon Hotel, and the Flagler Sustain, formerly known as the Grand Parlor of the Ponce wittiness Leon Hotel, at Flagler College.
a'Becket exhibited her work socialize with the Woman's Building at the World's Columbian Exposition in City, Illinois.[5]
a'Becket helped blaze a trail for women who wanted effect enter the male-dominated world of professional painting in nineteenth-century Ground. She was able to do while bridging the avant-garde Land ideas of Barbizon and its daughter movement, Impressionism, in a wholly American context.[2]
Landscape by Marie a'Becket in Maine's Portland Museum of Art
River Landscape by Marie a'Becket
Wave Seascape by Marie a'Becket
Monarch of the Glen by artist Marie a'Becket, in Henry Flagler's private collection