Medium: Oil
Support: Canvas
Artist: Sara Dodson
Artist Dates: 1847 - 1906
Country of Origin: USA / France
Title & Description: Painting depicts a scene with three female figures and three cherubs.
Signature: Signed lower right
Date of Work: c. 1900
Frame: Modern
Work Size: 14" H x 15" W
Frame Size: 24" H x 24.5" W x 2.5" D
Weight: 10 pounds
Provenance: Miami Estate
Condition: Unlined, minor craquelure, surface grime.
Meta: painting, art
Artist Biography: Sarah Dodson was an expatriate painter of classical and Biblical subjects in the grand manner of the nineteenth-century academies. Born in Philadelphia, she studied in 1872 with the history painter, Christian Schussele, at the Pennsylvania Academy, and then in Paris with Evariste Luminais and Jules Lefebvre.Her theatrical painting "Bacidae" (1883), was one of a series of salon pictures done in a bold and energetic style. It shows two priestesses of Bacis an ancient crone and younger woman in the divine ecstasy of prophecy after consulting the reeking entrails of a chicken. This work includes the customary trappings of classical furniture and costumes. The paint is applied in a vigorous manner with a rich color scheme of purple, white, and blue-green, heightened by a red accent of blood on the floor. Another well-known work by Dodson is her large canvas "The Signing of the Declaration of Independence" (1883).In her late style, Dodson turned toward symbolism, becoming mystical and poetic, somewhat in the manner of Henry Tanner, the black expatriate artist of religious themes. Sarah Dodson moved to Brighton, England, and continued to paint landscapes in addition to figure paintings. Long in frail health, she became seriously ill in 1893, but nevertheless, continued to work until her death in 1906.