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Maker(s):Haskell, Ernest
Culture:American (1876-1925)
Title:The Spinet
Date Made:ca. 1897-1899
Type:Drawing
Materials:ink with traces of graphite on off-white wove paper laid down on heavy board
Measurements:Sheet: 10 1/16 in x 7 1/8 in; 25.6 cm x 18.1 cm; Image: 5 7/16 in x 6 in; 13.85 cm x 15.2 cm
Accession Number:  AC 1996.179
Credit Line:Gift of Josephine Haskell Aldridge in memory of Richard Aldridge (Class of 1952)
Museum Collection:  Mead Art Museum at Amherst College
1996_179_r.jpg

Label Text:
In 1897 Haskell traveled to Paris for two years of study after a successful debut as an illustrator and poster designer in New York. Dissatisfied with the Académie Julian, he decided to develop his aesthetic taste by scrutinizing artworks made by those he considered modern masters of drawing. At some time during this period, Haskell created The Spinet, in which he emulated the singular aesthetic of the English graphic artist Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley’s exquisitely minimal compositions in pure black and white appealed to the young student eager to introduce precision into his pen-and-ink illustrations. Here, Haskell used sensuous lines to depict a young woman playing a small piano.

Haskell had the drawing framed in Paris before he exhibited it in his first solo exhibition at the Pratt Institute in 1899. After reviewing the more than two hundred drawings, paintings, and prints Haskell had brought back from Paris, a Brooklyn critic reserved highest praise for The Spinet, noting its “power and expression in delicate lines.”

KG, How He Was to His Talents exhibition, March 24, 2011-August 7, 2011

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+1996.179

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