Josephine and Mercie – (Edmund Charles Tarbell) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Edmund Charles Tarbell

Date: 1908

Size: 106 x 116 cm

Technique: Oil On Canvas

A young woman writes at a desk and a teenage girl reads a book in an armchair in an opulent room in this nearly square painting. Both women have rosy, peach-colored skin and honey-brown hair. To our left, the woman is shown from the knees up as she sits at a tall, mahogany-red, secretary desk. The desk has an emerald-green, tilted writing surface and two shelves packed with books and covered by glass doors, one of which is open. The desk has brass pulls on the drawers under and behind the writing surface, and the cabinet is topped with two curling scrolls to create a triangular pediment. The woman bends over her paper, facing our left in profile as she leans over and looks down at her writing. Her hair is loosely rolled up and pinned in place. She wears a white dress with ruffled, elbow-length sleeves and a lilac-purple sash. Golden chains hang from her neck almost to her lap, and a gold bracelet encircles her wrist. To our right and near the back corner of the room, the girl sits in a high-backed, wicker armchair. She hooks her right elbow, to our left, over the arm of the chair and leans in that direction, with a green pillow tucked into to her other side. Her body faces us and she looks down at a blue book in her hands. She has a round face, a straight nose, and her lips are closed. The girl’s hair is half pulled up in a dark bow atop her head as the rest falls around her shoulders. Her dress is streaked with pale gray, white, and harvest yellow, and is tied at the waist. Between the women, a dark brown cabinet or table holds a glass decanter with a glass stopper and lamp with a shiny, bulbus, white base and an off-white, rounded shade. Warm sunlight pours in from the two tall windows framed with ruffled, silvery-white curtains that flank the table, between the women. Mottled moss green and butter yellow suggest trees outside. The jamb of a French door runs along the right edge of the painting, beyond the reading girl. Several framed pictures hang on the sage-green walls. The artist signed the painting in the lower right: “Tarbell.”