Hello, DU! The Friday Afternoon Challenge returns with: Feminine Beauty in Portraits!

[countryjake]

36. #6 is "Tanagra" (The Builders, New York) by Childe Hassam 1918

http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=10089

In Tanagra (The Builders, New York), Childe Hassam painted an ambivalent image of modern life. At the turn of the twentieth century, the skyscraper symbolized all that was dynamic and powerful in America. Architects praised the new towers as symbols of mankind's reach for the heavens. But as the United States grew in power and prestige, the workers who provided the nation's muscle also seemed to threaten Hassam's orderly and prosperous world. The artist had won fame and fortune picturing New York for the delight of its moneyed class; the art, music, and fine manners surrounding this "blond Aryan girl" provided a buffer against the unruliness of America's immigrant society. If the skyscraper represents worldly ambition, the other vertical elements in the painting—the lilies, the Hellenistic figurine, the panels of a beautiful oriental screen—suggest a different kind of aspiration. But in 1918, the refined life this woman pursued in her elegant environment was already under attack by the reality of war and the clamor of a new century.
Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006


I had another fine google experience in trying to discover this painting. When you hinted with "object" earlier, I tried woman holding statue, window with blooming garlic, screen with birds, bowl of flowers, yellow dress, window with city view, woman with view of city, and eventually ended up looking thru the works of Frederick Carl Frieseke. After giving up on him, just on a fluke, I clicked on a link of "people also search for" at Frieseke's page...Childe Hassam...and found this Tanagra immediately.

An interesting tidbit about this artist, his painting The Avenue in the Rain finished only one year earlier than Tanagra has been hanging in the White House since JFK was president.