Spanierman Gallery | An American Art Blog

During the years I’ve worked in the research department at Spanierman Gallery, I’ve had ample opportunity to explore one of my favorite subjects––the American painters who worked in France during the late nineteenth century. Many of them were impressionists and one of the most interesting and influential was Theodore Robinson (1852-1896). Robinson holds a special place in the stable of historical American artists represented at the gallery: his work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions and he’s the subject of a forthcoming catalogue raisonné by Sona Johnston and Ira Spanierman.

As a figure painter, Robinson loved to depict women––not the fashionable urbaniste but unassuming pastoral types involved in humdrum activities such as picking fruit or doing laundry. As Johnston pointed out to me as I was researching the piece, The Red Gown features his close friend, Marie, posed before a blossoming fruit tree. Robinson met Marie in Paris the spring of 1884 and she appears in a number of canvases from this period wearing the same simple dress (slightly medieval in tone, it was one of Robinson’s studio props) and standing in an orchard. We really don’t know anything about the setting, but it was likely inspired the scenery in and around the village of Barbizon, one of Robinson’s favorite haunts during the mid-1880s. Marie is something of a mystery too…

She worked as an artist’s model in the French capital and became closely involved with Robinson, often visiting him in Giverny. Apparently, the couple had at one time considered marriage, but for unknown reasons they refrained from tying the knot. Robinson’s diary entry for November 27, 1892, indicates that he had a final lunch with Marie in Paris before returning to the United States; she was obviously on his mind in the ensuing years, for he continued to mention his muse in his diary, referring to her by the initial “M.”

What first struck me about this painting is the size––a salon-style format measuring over six feet high. There’s a hint of landscape, but the close cropping demonstrates that Robinson wanted us to focus our gaze directly on the statuesque Marie. Consistent with his former studies with the academic realist, Jean-Lêon Gérôme, he defines his model with a firm hand but imparts a broader handling to the background, applying his pigment with soft strokes that evoke a sense of the fleeting moment. In fact, the painting proved to me that despite the fact that he had not yet settled in Giverny, where he became friendly with Claude Monet, Theodore Robinson was already experimenting with the fluent brushwork of impressionism by the mid-1880s. The lively colors also indicate a change in his aesthetic direction. But I think there’s more going on here too; the contemplative theme and choice of a red as the dominant tone perhaps reflects his passionate feelings towards Marie––the young French woman who inspired so many of his paintings and likewise touched his heart.