Charles Webster Hawthorne (1872-1930)

Jennifer Hardin writes of the present work, "Rich colors--golds, mauves, sky blues and a vibrant red--are employed to heighten the sensuality of a woman in a domestic setting. Suggestive of toilette scenes by Degas, the viewer can imagine the women in the process of dressing. The vibrant curtains in the background recall a landscape, heightening the aestheticized nature of the painting...While his [Hawthorne's] subjects were occaisionally genteel, such refined paintings...are rare in his ouevre." (In the American Spirit: Realism and Impressionism from the Lawrence Collection, exhibition catalogue, St. Petersburg, Florida, 1999, p. 30)