Lady with Red Shawl

Date1849

Artist George Henry Hall (1825-1913)

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 27 x 22 1/8in. (68.6 x 56.2cm) and Framed: 32 1/4 x 27 3/8in.

Credit LineGift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

Object number1937.100.1

DescriptionA half-length portrait of a hazel-eyed, middle-aged woman in a feigned oval. She is shown against a shaded brown background and wears a black dress with a V neckline over white lace, with an oval pin at her throat. She wears a red shawl around her shoulders. Her brown hair is parted in the center, looped forward over her ears, and pulled back in a bun. She wears a small lacy cap and red flowers on her head.
The 3-inch molded gold leaf frame with gold leaf oval insert is original.
Label TextGeorge Henry Hall was born in Manchester, New Hampshire, on September 2.1, 1825, and grew up in Boston, where he developed an early interest in art. His self-portrait, executed at age nineteen, is in the Brooklyn Museum. By 1847 Hall began to exhibit his work at the prestigious Boston Athenaeum, and soon after painting Lady with Red Shawl in 1849, he left America for seven years of study in Dusseldorf and Paris. After his return, he exhibited in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, where he died on February 17, 1913.

Hall's early skill and ambitious inclination toward academic painting are clearly visible in his selection of a feigned oval format and in the painterly treatment of this woman's face.

InscribedPainted above the subject's proper right shoulder is the inscription "G. H. Hall/Boston, 1849."
ProvenanceFound by Katrina Kipper, Accord, Mass.; purchased from Kipper by Mrs. Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and given by the latter to CWF in 1939.