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{{Short description|Painting by Thomas Eakins}}
{{Infobox Artwork
|image_file = Thomas Eakins 005.jpg
|image_size = 250px
|title = Miss Amelia Van Buren
|artist = [[Thomas Eakins]]
|year = c. 1891
|medium = [[Oil painting|Oil on canvas]]
|height_metric =
|width_metric =
|height_imperial = 45
|width_imperial = 32
|metric_unit = cm
|imperial_unit = in
|museum = [[The Phillips Collection]]
|city = [[Washington, D.C.]]
}}

'''''Miss Amelia Van Buren''''' or '''''Portrait of Amelia C. Van Buren''''' is a {{circa|1891}} painting by the American artist [[Thomas Eakins]] (1844–1916), now in [[The Phillips Collection]]. It depicts [[Amelia Van Buren]] ({{circa|lk=no|1856}} – 1942), an artist who studied with Eakins, and was called "one of his most gifted pupils."<ref name="S260">Sewell, 260</ref> The painting is considered one of Eakins's finest works.<ref name="S260">Sewell, 260</ref><ref>Wilmerding. 1993. p. 121</ref>

==Background==
Van Buren studied with Eakins at the [[Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts]] in 1884 and 1885. In 1886 Eakins described her as <blockquote>"a lady of perhaps thirty years or more, and from Detroit[.] She came to the Academy some years ago to study figure painting by which art she hoped to support herself, her parents I believe being dead. I early recognized her as a very capable person. She had a temperament sensitive to color and form, was grave, earnest, thoughtful, and industrious. She soon surpassed her fellows, and I marked her as one I ought to help in every way...."<ref name="S260">Sewell, 260</ref></blockquote>

Eakins's helpfulness included unusual methods: he once disrobed privately for Van Buren in order to demonstrate an anatomical point, an action that he characterized as purely professional. Nevertheless, the story was one of numerous controversial incidents used by Eakins's political adversaries to prompt his dismissal from the Pennsylvania Academy.<ref>Homer. 1992. pp. 167, 176</ref><ref>Wilmerding. 1993. p. 120</ref>

After she had ceased studying with Eakins, Van Buren frequently stayed as a guest in his Mount Vernon Street home, and likely posed for the painting during one of her visits to Philadelphia. Although the painting is dated c. 1891,<ref>1891 is the date accepted by most scholars, although some have proposed a slightly earlier date based on the recollections of friends of Eakins. Wilmerding. 1993. p. 121</ref> it is also possible that the portrait could have been painted during a long stay with Eakins and his wife from December 6, 1888 to August 12, 1889.<ref name="S260">Sewell, 260</ref> Another friend and student of Eakins's, Charles Bregler, later wrote "I recall with pleasure looking on for several hours one afternoon while he (Eakins) was painting in this room that beautiful portrait of Miss Van Buren....No conversation took place, his attention being entirely concentrated on the painting."<ref name="S260">Sewell, 260</ref>

Van Buren eventually left painting to devote herself to photography. There exist several photographs of her that have been attributed to Eakins or his circle.<ref name="S260">Sewell, 260</ref> She established a [[Boston marriage]] with fellow Eakins student [[Eva Watson]].

==Composition==
[[File:Amelia Van Buren c1884.jpg|thumb|upright|A photograph of Van Buren by [[Thomas Eakins]]]]
Van Buren's seated figure creates a pyramidal composition, activated by the movement of her head, arms, and torso. Her body is illuminated and given sculptural form by a strong shaft of light coming from the left. Her face is thin and serious, her graying hair pulled back, as she supports her head with her left hand, her right hand counterpoised in her lap, holding a fan. For Eakins's biographer John Wilmerding, the contrast between the arms is noteworthy: one arm is solid and "architectural...suggestive of an unspoken potential for great vitality", and "the anchor of the portrait" that belies the otherwise reflective countenance; the other hand is shadowed and limp.<ref name="Wilmerding120">Wilmerding. 1993. p. 120</ref> She sits in a [[Jacobean era|Jacobean]]-revival chair, a prop that Eakins often used for his studio portraits.<ref name="S260">Sewell, 260</ref> It is selectively detailed, so as to support without distracting from Van Buren's figure.<ref name="S260">Sewell, 260</ref> Van Buren's dress contains complex passages, composed in part of broad, brilliant pink forms, and of creased light-colored fabric with floral patterns.

Her body twists "like an overused spring",<ref name="S260">Sewell, 260</ref> culminating in the focal point of her head, its anatomical structure exactingly rendered, the broad forehead suggesting the sitter's intellectual presence.<ref name="S260">Sewell, 260</ref> She exhibits what one reviewer had already referred to as "an Eakinsish expression", characteristic of his ability to portray "mere thinking without the aid of gesture or attitude."<ref name="S312">Sewell, 312</ref> In a letter from his youth, Eakins explained his interest in the: <blockquote>"higher class[,] the thinking people and feeling ones who always want to see everything [and] to know more".<ref name="S312">Sewell, 312</ref></blockquote>

Van Buren was often unwell, and was diagnosed as having [[neurasthenia]];<ref name="S260">Sewell, 260</ref> in 1886 she wrote to Eakins's wife Susan: "I have at last discovered that the trouble with me is in my head it is exhausted by worry or something or other..."<ref name="S260">Sewell, 260</ref> The portrait seems to indicate as much. Touching on the picture's melancholy, [[John Updike]] referred to the painting when he wrote "Discomfort and a grieving inwardness distinguish the best of his (Eakins's) many portraits."<ref>Updike. 2005. p. 80</ref> The sense of weariness has been interpreted also as a projection of Eakins's personality, especially in the wake of his professional difficulties.<ref>Wilmerding. 1993. pp. 120, 121</ref> As a psychological study, it has been noted that such a profound rendering of a former student is unusual, and that the painting may be seen as a sort of self-portrait.<ref name="Wilmerding121">Wilmerding. 1993. p. 121</ref>

==Reception==
[[File:Amelia Van Buren with Cat.jpg|thumb|Attributed to Thomas Eakins, a photograph of ''Amelia C. Van Buren with a cat,'' c. late 1880s–1891<ref name="S260etc">Sewell. pp. 260, 278–281</ref>]]

''Miss Amelia Van Buren'' was only the second portrait of a woman from outside his family that Eakins showed publicly; at neither the Philadelphia prelude to the [[World's Columbian Exposition]] nor subsequently in Chicago did it receive much mention in the press.<ref name="S260">Sewell, 260</ref> More recent praise has been unqualified. [[William Innes Homer]] has called it "superb', and written that "Such a painting can hold its own against the best work of any of Eakins's contemporaries, no matter what their country of origin."<ref>Homer. 1992. pp. 230–231</ref> For [[John Canaday]], it was "the finest of all American portraits."<ref>Canaday. 1964. p. 95.</ref>

==Provenance==
The painting came into Van Buren's possession, possibly as a gift from the artist, by 1893. In 1927 the [[The Phillips Collection|Phillips Memorial Gallery]] purchased it from Van Buren.<ref name="Wilmerding121">Wilmerding. 1993. p. 121</ref><ref>''[http://stage.phillipscollection.org/research/american_art/miscellaneous/eakins-unit.htm Eakins in the Collection] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090228100321/http://stage.phillipscollection.org/research/american_art/miscellaneous/eakins-unit.htm |date=2009-02-28 }}''. The Phillips Collection, retrieved March 18, 2009</ref>

==See also==
* [[List of works by Thomas Eakins]]

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}

==References==
* Canaday, John: Thomas Eakins; "Familiar truths in clear and beautiful language", Horizon. Volume VI, Number 4, Autumn 1964.
* Homer, William Innes: Thomas Eakins: His Life and Art. Abbeville Press, 1992. {{ISBN|1-55859-281-4}}
* Sewell, Darrel; et al. Thomas Eakins. Yale University Press, 2001. {{ISBN|0-87633-143-6}}
* Updike, John: "The Ache in Eakins", Still Looking: Essays on American Art. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. {{ISBN|1-4000-4418-9}}
* Wilmerding, John. Thomas Eakins. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. {{ISBN|1-56098-313-2}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Miss Amelia Van Buren by Thomas Eakins}}
* [http://www.phillipscollection.org/research/american_art/artwork/Eakins-MissAmelia_VanBuren.htm ''Miss Amelia Van Buren'', The Phillips Collection]

{{Thomas Eakins}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Miss Amelia Van Buren}}
[[Category:Portraits by Thomas Eakins]]
[[Category:1891 paintings]]
[[Category:19th-century portraits]]
[[Category:Paintings in the Phillips Collection]]
[[Category:Portraits of women]]
[[Category:Oil on canvas paintings]]

Miss Amelia Van Buren - Revision history

imported>Doomhope: added Category:Oil on canvas paintings using HotCat