Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942)
Portrait of Mrs. Andrew Carnegie, 1917-18
Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942) produced handsome large canvases of her socially prominent subjects, some rivaling the bravura technique of John Singer Sargent, the favored painter of the American aristocracy. Born in Philadelphia, with the death of her mother shortly after she was born, her grief-stricken father returned to his native France, leaving Cecilia and her sister to be raised by her maternal grandmother and two aunts. It was an unusual upbringing, but her genteelly impoverished relatives appreciated the arts and valued culture, and Beaux’s career benefited from her solid grounding within her extended family, who supported her decision to become an artist. After private art lessons, Beaux enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy in 1877, pursuing further study in Paris for two years.
Returning to Philadelphia in 1889, she soon gained a reputation as a skilled portraitist, receiving commissions from elite patrons in the major cities of the Northeast. Such was the demand for her work, that by the turn of the twentieth century, she established her studio in New York. It was there that she painted her handsome portrait of Mrs. Andrew Carnegie (1917-18), commissioned by the Carnegie Institute to honor the spouse of its founder. When health problems made it difficult for her to paint after 1924, Beaux focused her energies on writing her autobiography, publishing Background with Figures in 1930. She died in 1942 at the age of eighty-seven.
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