Description:
girl; portrait; outdoor; landscape; flower; leisure/recreation; costume/uniform
Label Text:
This portrait depicts the daughter of August Wassermann, a German furrier and founder of the Alaska Commercial Company who helped facilitate the treaty for the United States purchase of Alaska from Russia (1867). Originally from Germany, the family lived in San Francisco, where Olga was born. Her father commissioned this portrait when she was about ten years old. The patterned background and eerie expression of the girl create an unsettling effect. This fantasy-like setting may be an extension of the girl’s imagination. The artist has captured her at the moment when she is still a child but will soon become a woman. This transition may be conveyed by her pose; more akin to how an adult might stiffly sit on a swing rather than how a child would enjoy its back and forth motion.
Trained in Vienna, Anton Romako later traveled to Munich, Venice, and Rome, where he spent much of his career. Due to
a succession of tragedies in his personal life, he returned to Vienna to paint. Romako rejected the dominant Biedermeier style that was rooted in realistic scenes of everyday life to focus on the expressive use of color. He was rediscovered a few decades after his death by the Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoshka, who was greatly influenced by him. The Smith College Museum of Art is the first American museum to have acquired a painting by Romako.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1963.58 |
