Edmund Charles Tarbell Sold at Auction Prices

Figure painter, Painter, Portrait painter, Illustrator, b. 1862 - d. 1938

(b West Groton, MA, 1862; d New Castle, NH, 1938) American Painter. Tarbell was recognized as the leader of the Boston figural Impressionists. As a number of young artists returned to Massachusetts after traveling in the French countryside at Giverny, a new school of Impressionist landscape painters including Frank Weston Benson and Tarbell adopted the Impressionist style, creating figural works that surpassed their landscape counterparts in influence and significance. Like his colleague William McGregor Paxton, Tarbell was seen as a painter whose style and intentions followed in the tradition of the great Dutch painter Jan Vermeer. Each artist loved the different qualities of light… Tarbell and Frank Benson became the Directors of the Department of Paintings and Drawings at the Museum School at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Tarbell was a revered teacher as well as a successful painter. By 1913, Tarbell resigned from the museum school and had become a well-known member and founder of the now famous group, "The Ten"… "The Ten" exhibited only their finest paintings and drawings and within a decade became the most sought-after painters in America. (Credit: Christie’s, New York, Important American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, December 5, 2002, Lot 72)