CEREMONIA || Christa Zaat

Christa Zaat



Charles Sprague Pearce (American artist) 1851 - 1914
A Cup Of Tea, 1883
oil on canvas
68.6 x 57.2 cm. (27 x 22 1/2 in.)
Smith College Museum of Art, Western Massachusetts, United States

Pearce was born at Boston, Massachusetts. In 1873 he became a pupil of Léon Bonnat in Paris, and after 1885 he lived in Paris and at Auvers-sur-Oise. He painted Egyptian and Algerian scenes, French peasants, and portraits, and also decorative work, notably for the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress at Washington. He received medals at the Paris Salon and elsewhere, and was made Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, decorated with the Order of Leopold, Belgium, the Order of the Red Eagle, Prussia, and the Order of the Dannebrog, Denmark.

During the mid-nineteenth century, before America had truly established its claim to artistic originality, American artists were seduced by the fascinating Parisian art scene. During the latter half of the nineteenth century an important group of American artists congregated in France, among them Mary Cassatt, James Abbot MacNeill Whistler – though only temporarily- and Daniel Ridgway Knight, among many others. Another American artist, albeit one who has not been given sufficient attention, is Charles Sprague Pearce, whose presence in Paris and later Auvers-sur-Oise was important for the propagation and appreciation of American artwork, even though he continued to be strongly influenced by the predominant European artistic styles of the period. Commenting on the diversity of Charles Sprague Pearce’s oeuvre, Dodge Thompson (‘Charles Sprague Pearce: a forgotten realist of the gilded age’, The Magazine Antiques, vol. 144 (5), pg. 682) wrote that:

Pearce was one of the most inquisitive and ambitious of the expatriate American painters in Europe in his day, at various times experimenting with realism, neo-grec historicism, Orientalism (both modern and biblical), plein-air naturalism, Japonism, impressionism, symbolism, and pointillism.

Pearce’s blend of the exotic and the popular led him to become a sought after artist in both Europe and America, perpetuating the interest in Orientalist aesthetics, among many other preoccupations, as well as the search for newer styles and iconography strongly influenced by what was shown at the public Salon exhibitions.