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Compare the closely modeled face with the loose, streaky strokes of the black dress, then find the white collar between them.
Mary Adeline Williams, known as Addie, had been a childhood playmate of Eakins’s sister. She sat for this portrait in 1899, a year before she moved into the Philadelphia home of Eakins and his wife, the artist Susan Macdowell Eakins. The portrait looks stern, but Susan’s diary describes an active woman who rode bicycles and went to exhibitions.
Oil on canvas · 61 × 50.8 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Realism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Portrait of Mary Adeline Williams
- Artist
- Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916)
- Date
- 1899
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 61 × 50.8 cm (24 × 20 1/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Friends of American Art Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.