Centenary of The Guild of Boston Artists evokes memory of Edmund Charles Tarbell

A gala celebration this evening marks the kick-off of the centennial festivities of The Guild of Boston Artists, known as “Boston’s premier source for contemporary realism.”

Founded in 1914, this non-profit association of painters and sculptors still maintains its building at 162 Newbury Street in the heart of the Hub’s gallery district as it continues to facilitate commissions by some of the region’s most sought-after creators of traditional portraits, landscapes, and seascapes.

Press notices are drawing attention to the fact that in April of this year Concord-based Jean Lightman, famous for her exquisitely lit floral compositions, was named the first female president in the 100-year history of this prestigious organization.

But the century mark also prompts a mini-refresher course on the organization’s first president and founding father , longtime Dorchester resident Edmund Charles Tarbell (April 26, 1862 – August 1, 1938)

Although Tarbell’s canvases are not as well known as those of Childe Hassam, another artist with Dorchester roots who painted in a similar style, some Tarbell works have commanded prices of several million dollars.

A prominent American Impressionist painter, Tarbell was a member of “The Ten” (Ten American Painters who left the Society of American Artists in 1897 in protest against what they perceived as a devaluation of Impressionism). In 1927, Tarbell was elected as a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His works hang in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Corcoran Gallery, National Academy of Design, Worcester Art Museum, and numerous other collections.

After studying in Paris, then the center of the art world, and traveling across the continent, Tarbell returned to Boston and at age 26 married Emeline Souther, an art student and daughter of a prominent Dorchester family. They lived from 1886 to 1906 at 24 Alban St. on Ashmont Hill in a house belonging to his stepfather, David Frank Hartford.

For a great many of his canvases, Tarbell used the models closest at hand—his wife, children, and grandchildren. Titles of his paintings like “My Children in the Woods” and “Edmund on His Pony Peanut” confirm the impression that he loved to capture one or more members of his family just doing everyday activities. However, he occasionally did portraits of various notable persons, including members of the neighboring Codman family and national figures like US presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.

So popular was the painter as a teacher at Boston’s Museum School that his disciples came to be known as “Tarbellites.”

Many of his paintings are becoming more and more valuable. In December 2010, the auctioneering house Sotheby’s reported that its surprise best-seller was “Boston School artist Edmund Tarbell’s idyllic seaside scene of 1899, “Child and Boat,” which more than doubled the low estimate to reach an artist auction record of $4,226,500.”

Read more about Tarbell and other Dot painters on the Dorchester Atheneum site. The Guild has a two-gallery retrospective of its first hundred years, including pieces by Tarbell, running through Jan. 3.

For more information, see guildofbostonartists.org.


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