1862 -1938 · American Impressionism and Boston School

Silent interiors, pearly light, family elegance and construction inherited from the old masters make Edmund Tarbell the leader of the Boston School.

Born in 1862 in West Groton, Massachusetts, Edmund Charles Tarbell trained first in Boston then left for Paris in 1883. At the Académie Julian, he studied with Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, while discovering the Impressionists and the old masters. Returning to the United States in 1886, he taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from 1889 to 1912. His influence was such that his students were sometimes nicknamed the Tarbellites. Tarbell associated a luminous touch from impressionism with the controlled composition of Vermeer, Velazquez and Whistler. His models, often his wife Emeline, his daughters or those close to him, read, sew, have tea or rest in refined New England interiors. Antique furniture, Asian porcelain and fabrics are not just accessories: they build a world where past and modernity coexist. A member of the Ten American Painters group, Tarbell also became a sought-after official portraitist. He then directed the Corcoran School of Art. He then directed the Corcoran School of Art. He then directed the Corcoran School of Art. He died in New Castle, New Hampshire, in 1938. The "Edmund Charles Tarbell" selection notably compared Arrangement in Pink and Gray (Afternoon Tea) and Girl Reading. His reading favors movement.

Tarbell makes the domestic interior a theater of light: silence, furniture and figure agree like voices of the same composition.