''Jessica'' is an 1890 painting by

Dennis Miller Bunker Dennis Miller Bunker (November 6, 1861 – December 28, 1890) was an American painter and innovator of American Impressionism. His mature works include both brightly colored landscape paintings and dark, finely drawn portraits and figures. One ...

in the

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

. It is considered one of Bunker's finest figure paintings, and has been described by art historian

Theodore Stebbins Theodore Ellis Stebbins, Jr. (born August 11, 1938) is an American art historian and curator. Stebbins is currently the Consultative Curator of American Art at the Harvard Art Museums. Career From 1977 to 1999, Stebbins was the John Moors Cabot ...

as "among the most evocative" works of its time.Hirshler, 16 In October 1889 Bunker took a studio and living quarters at 3 North Washington Square in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, alongside friends and fellow artists

Abbott Handerson Thayer Abbott Handerson Thayer (August 12, 1849May 29, 1921) was an American artist, naturalist and teacher. As a painter of portraits, figures, animals and landscapes, he enjoyed a certain prominence during his lifetime, and his paintings are represen ...

Thomas Dewing Thomas Wilmer Dewing (May 4, 1851November 5, 1938) was an American painter working at the turn of the 20th century. Schooled in Paris, Dewing was noted for his figure paintings of aristocratic women. He was a founding member of the Ten America ...

, and

Charles A. Platt Charles Adams Platt (October 16, 1861 – September 12, 1933) was a prominent American architect, garden designer, and artist of the "American Renaissance" movement. His garden designs complemented his domestic architecture. Early career Pai ...

.Hirshler, 175 Newly married and seeking to establish a reputation as a portrait artist in order to support himself and his bride, Bunker painted ''Jessica'' in the spring of 1890 using a hired professional model. ''Jessica'' depicts an elegant and aristocratic looking woman in a black dress. She is painted bust length, life size and in profile, her fair skin and red hair set against a dark background. The painting evidences the influence of the circle of Bunker's intimates, including Thayer and Dewing, for its heightened sense of refinement. At the time of the painting Bunker wrote:

I've been doing badly all day long— and I thought I was doing uncommonly well— but about four o' clock I scraped everything I had done for the last two days and my canvas is back again where I started it— and I am as blue as indigo.Hirshler, 74

Bunker died just after Christmas 1890 at the age of 29; in 1891 the painting was given to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, by a group of his admirers. Artist and writer

R. H. Ives Gammell Robert Hale Ives Gammell (1893 – 1981) was an American artist best known for his sequence of paintings based on Francis Thompson's poem " The Hound of Heaven". Gammell painted symbolic images that reflected his study of literature, mythol ...

wrote of the painting: "One of the most beautifully studied heads in American art. The transitions of tone and the minor shifts are stated with great subtlety without losing the larger color relations. At the same time the edges and accents throughout the canvas are given exactly the relative degree of definition perceptible to eyes focused so as to take in the entire area depicted. In the painting itself the young woman appears to exist in space, surrounded by atmosphere and light and shadow. Yet the draftsmanship is so sure that we never lose our sense of the form in all its inherent loveliness. The combination of qualities has only rarely been attained in the painting of a head."Gammell, 175

Notes

References

* Gammell, R.H. Ives. ''The Twilight of Painting'', Parnassus Imprints, Orleans, Massachusetts, 1990. * Hirshler, Erica E., et al. ''Dennis Miller Bunker: American Impressionist'', Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1994.

External links

''Jessica'', Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jessica (painting) 1890 paintings 19th-century portraits American paintings Paintings in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston