American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists Featuring the Papageorge Family Collection

Exhibited

National Academy of Design, New York, New York, 1928.
"One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Annual Exhibition," Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 26-March 16, 1930, no. 61 (per stamp on stretcher verso).
International Art Center of Roerich, New York, New York, 1930 (as Oriental Decoration per partial label verso).
The Arnot Art Gallery, Elmira, New York, n.d.

Note

Born in Vienna to American parents, Emma Fordyce MacRae pursued part of her artistic training at the New York School of Art, where she studied under Kenneth Hayes Miller, who encouraged her sense of design and use of simplified forms. She first exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1918, and officially joined the Philadelphia Ten in 1937, during the most productive period of her career. She later opened studios of her own in New York and Gloucester, Massachusetts and exhibited extensively on the East Coast until her death in 1974.

Best known for her floral still life paintings often paired with fragments of interiors or Japanesque tapestries (see Lots 102-104), MacRae also received critical praise for her figural portraits of cooly detached women (usually friends or models she hired) set against a decorative background, such as the present work, the poetically titled The Dreamer. One of MacRae's most expressive figure paintings, The Dreamer is more than just a portrait of an unknown beauty, but a formidable arrangement of shapes and patterns. The woman's white bustier dress offers a dashing contrast with the rest of the painting - a symphony of soft pinks, yellows and greens - and allows the model to stand out and echo the white lilies to her right, thus associating woman and flower. This symbiosis is further enhanced by the general treatment of the work, which MacRae transforms into a rough, gritty surface that resembles a woven tapestry or flaking fresco. Applying her paint sparingly, MacRae allows the texture of the canvas to show through, making it look (and feel) like a dry, plastery surface. Applied to portraiture, this technique produces a "cool, detached...almost impersonal note," and grants her work the same timeless appeal as Renaissance chefs d'oeuvre or Japanese block prints–an influence suggested by the vase at left, the oriental motifs of the background tapestry as well as the overall color harmony - an usual combination found in export ceramics. The result is an elegantly simple, resolutely modern portrait that conveys the "appeal of [a] quiet, dreamy and meditative existence and serenity" as Page Talbott explains.