Name: 19th Century painting of young child in green by American Artist, Pauline Palmer
Brand: Pauline Palmer

About the Item

Pauline Lennards Palmer, a leading American Impressionist, was a prolific, popular, and well-respected artist and leader among her peers. Born in 1867 in McHenry, Illinois, to German immigrant parents, Pauline Lennards demonstrated an early propensity for drawing. Following her formal education in a convent school in Milwaukee, Illinois, Palmer began teaching art to students in Chicago public schools. In 1891 she married Albert Elwood Palmer, a wealthy physician who enabled Pauline to devote herself full-time to an artistic career. The following year she enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied with two of the country’s greatest painters, William Merrit Chase and Frank Duveneck. At their urging, Palmer traveled abroad in 1900 to Paris to further her education. She remained there for three years as a pupil of Louis Collin, René Prinet, Gustave Courtois, and Lucien J. Simon. Palmer found great success both abroad and at home. In Paris, she exhibited at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts from 1903 to 1906 and again in 1911. Similarly in the United States, she was recognized early on as a dominant figure in the contemporary art world, exhibiting across the country in cities such as St. Louis, San Francisco, and Philadelphia, and almost annually in Chicago. In 1913 and 1919 Palmer was honored with a one-person exhibit at the Art Institute. She was very active within the artistic community, and as the first woman president of the Chicago Society of Artists she broke barriers and redefined the validity and influence of women artists. She served as president of the Art Institute Alumni Association in 1927, and as president of the Chicago Association of Painters and Sculptors from 1929 to 1931. Throughout her career Palmer was the recipient of many prestigious awards, including the St. Louis Exposition Bronze Medal in 1904, the Marshall Field Prize in 1907, the Thompson Prize in 1914, the Chicago Society of Artists Silver Medal in 1920, and the Brown Prize in 1937. Palmer is best known for her impressionistically rendered portraits and genre images of women and children. Equally adept at working in oil, pastel, tempera, and watercolor, her earliest works have somber colors and rigid compositions, a reflection of her education at the Art Institute. As her style matured, Palmer eventually abandoned this tonal, academic style in lieu of a lighter palette, looser compositions, and more painterly brushstrokes. Her great success as a portrait painter afforded her the ability to maintain a studio in the Tree Studio Building in Chicago out of which she worked for the majority of her career, though she often traveled and worked throughout France and Italy. Following the death of her husband in 1920, Palmer settled into the artist’s colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts, among friends and influences including the painters Charles Hawthorne and Richard Miller. It was in Provincetown, with its sun-drenched gardens, beaches, and quaint interiors that Palmer developed fully as an impressionist painter. Palmer continued to work in this style until her death in 1938 in Trondheim, Norway, where she fell ill with pneumonia while traveling. Throughout her active career, Pauline Palmer produced a body of work vibrant with light, energy, and often imbued with a soft sentimentality that resonates with the human condition. As a lifelong student of art, her exploratory, evolving aesthetic found its highest achievement in her Impressionist works, which distinguishes her as one of the leading American Impressionists.

Creator:
Pauline Palmer (1867 - 1938, American)
Dimensions:
Height: 35 in (88.9 cm)Width: 30 in (76.2 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)
Medium:
Oil
Movement & Style:
American Realist
Period:
Late 19th Century
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Washington, DC
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU123825356672