Alexandre Cabanel
Mary Frick Garrett, later Mrs. Mary Frick Jacobs
1885
Physical Qualities
Oil on canvas, 55 x 35 in. (139.7 x 88.9 cm.)
Credit Line
The Mary Frick Jacobs Collection
Object Number
1938.238
In this nearly full-length portrait, Mary Frick Jacobs (1848–1936) gazes directly at the viewer. Dressed in a fashionable white gown for the opera, she is otherwise simply adorned, wearing a ring and gold bracelet and holding her opera glasses. Jacobs, one of the founding donors of the Baltimore Museum of Art and whose name these European galleries bear, posed twice for Alexandre Cabanel in his studio in Paris, France, to complete this work.
Like many elite American art collectors who traveled to Paris in the late 19th century , Jacobs and her first husband, Robert Garrett (1847–1896)—whose fortune came from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad—were keen to have their likenesses painted by this celebrated French artist. Cabanel’s fluid brushwork captures the elegance and confidence of the sitter.
Baltimore Museum of Art by bequest, 1938; Mary Frick Jacobs, Baltimore, MD.
John Dorsay (guest curator), The Baltimore Museum of Art, "Architect John Russell Pope's Baltimore", March 31-August 1, 2004.
Sylvain Amic and Michel Hilaire, Musée Fabre de Montpellier, "Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889), La tradition du beau", July 10-December 5, 2010; Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Fondation Corboud de Cologne, February 4-May 15, 2011.
Sylvain Amic and Michel Hilaire, Musée Fabre de Montpellier, "Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889), La tradition du beau", July 10-December 5, 2010; Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Fondation Corboud de Cologne, February 4-May 15, 2011.
Dr. Henry Barton Jacobs, "The Collection of Mary Frick Jacobs," Dr. Henry Barton Jacobs Publisher, Baltimore, 1938.
The Baltimore Museum of Art, "BMA News," October 1958, p.2.
The Baltimore Museum of Art, "BMA Today," March / April 2003 p.6, ill.
Michel Hilaire and Sylvain Amic, "Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889), La tradition du beau," Somogy éditions d'art, Paris, France, 2010, p. 347, ill.
Andreas Blühm, "Alexandre Cabanel, The Tradition of Beauty," Cologne: Hirmer Verlag, 2011, p. 83, ill.
Baltimore Museum of Art. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Celebrating a Museum. Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 2014.
Bryan, Charles S., MD. "Henry Barton Jacobs, William Osler's intimate friend." Presented in part at the 46th Annual Meeting of the American Osler Society, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 3, 2016, printed in Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings 30(1): 101-105.
Inscribed: Signature located lower left, "Alex Cabanel, 1885"
