Cecilia Beaux, Visions Realized

"Mrs. Alexander Sedgwick and Christina"
by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux seemed to have a vision for each portrait that she painted, and I appreciate her observations in this regard. She wrote: 

"'Christina' was to have been a head only, but I was so hotly pursued by another idea that I was led to ask Mrs. Sedgwick if she would come into the picture as an accessory. She consented, also accepting consequent developments, which must have been irksome. So sustaining was her understanding and sympathy, so established the design, that, including the little Princess Christina, we moved in a sort of rhythmic union through the whole performance, and I suffered the modicum of torment, and only in details, whose importance had but one significance, that of being present but unobserved."

'Mrs. Barton' was one of the, to me, most highly relished portraits I ever did. Yet I never felt that her family were quite satisfied. There seemed to be in her a kind of unflinching heroism that she had never had occasion to use.

A New England woman, who was also a great-granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson, might have been said to have a right to this quality, among others, but as far as I was concerned as her portrayer, I believed that to express her the firmest technique should be employed. A profile - showing the grand space between the turn of forehead and the line of the neck. But it must also be rich and tender; the way to be found for this, in color and texture, between the firm lines of the design. The range would be wide, a deep note, and a very clear-colored one, kept apart, with much detail between. 

The whole, in the matter of treatment, should be serene and composed, not a fervid announcement, written with a flowing brush. It should have the quality of enamel, as if molded in a pate, flexible, but capable of solidification and permanence. All this was hoped for and was a vision imperfectly realized, but not entirely defeated."

(Excerpt from "Background with Figures" by Cecilia Beaux.)