Sketch of a Woman in Renaissance Dress
Artist
Susan Watkins
(American, 1875 - 1913)
CultureAmerican
Date1903
MediumPencil on paper
DimensionsOverall: 12 1/8 x 9 5/8 in. (30.8 x 24.4 cm)
Credit LineBequest of Goldsborough Serpell
Object number46.76.0014D
Not on view
DescriptionPage from a sketch book with drawings of heads; pencil on paper.Label TextSusan Watkins American (1875-1913) Sketch of a Woman in Renaissance Dress, 1903 Pencil on paper Goldsborough Serpell Bequest 46.76.0014d Watkins' Paris sketchbooks contain several studies of men and women in elaborate, historical dress. Among them is this handsome pencil drawing of a young woman in a Renaissance headdress that recalls the portraiture of the sixteenth-century German painter Hans Holbein the Younger. Such nostalgic, "historical" portraiture was a standard part of the repertoire of late-nineteenth-century academic artists like Watkins. The same taste pervades Watkins' The 1830 Girl, on view nearby. ProvenanceThe artist, Susan Watkins Serpell, bequeathed to her husband, Goldsborough Serpell, 1913; Bequest of Goldsborough Serpell to the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences, 1946; Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences transferred to the Chrysler Museum, 1971. Exhibition History"The Gentle Modernist: The Art of Susan Watkins," Waitzer Community Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., May 15, 2002 - March 2003. "Women of the Chrysler: a 400-Year Celebration of the Arts," Large Changing Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., March 24 - July 18, 2010.
