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Robert Loftin Newman (Tennessee/New York/France, 1827-1912) oil on canvas painting of a woman, nude from the waist up, who kneels as she looks upward and away from the viewer, into the darkness above. A white cloth covers her lower body and a red curtain hangs behind her. Partial signature with losses and overpainting at lower left reads “R L N…” Partial pencil inscription to back of stretcher reads “M[agda?]len” and “Miss A Armstrong / Knoxville.” Housed in an ornate giltwood frame. Canvas: 12 in. H x 9 in. W. Sight: 11 1/2 in. H x 8 1/2 in. W. Framed: 16 1/4 in. H x 13 3/8 in. W. Note: Adelia Armstrong Lutz (1859-1931) married in 1886, at which time she took the Lutz name. The inscription on the stretcher with her maiden name of Armstrong suggests a pre-1886 creation date for this painting. Additionally, the painting closely resembles images of “the Penitent Mary Magdalene” by Jean-Jacques Henner, which he began to produce around the early 1870s. (See the 1881 example in the collection of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University). Artist Biography: Robert Newman was born in Richmond, Virginia, and grew up in Clarksville, Tennessee. He is sometimes associated with Albert Pinkham Ryder, an artist with whom he shared a similar style and artistic technique. For Newman (who never knew his father) mothers and children were frequent subject matter, along with Old and New Testament themes. Newman studied briefly with Thomas Couture in Paris in 1850, and on a second trip to Paris in 1854, William Morris Hunt introduced him to J. F. Millet and to the Barbizon painters. Newman served with the Confederate forces during the Civil War before moving to New York. He returned to Tennessee in 1872 and tried to establish an academy of fine arts in Nashville, but by 1873, he was back in New York, where he resided the rest of his life. He rarely exhibited his work. (Source: Matthew Baigell, “Dictionary of American Artists”; Peter Falk, “Who Was Who in American Art”; The Smithsonian American Art Museum).
PROVENANCE:
Collection of Adelia Lutz, fellow Tennessee artist and contemporary of Newman, thence by descent.
CONDITION:
Overall very good condition. With losses to pigment layer, exposed canvas, and black overpainting along extreme lower edge and extending 1 1/4 inch along lower right edge. See U/V photography. Signature with loss and overpainting. Two slightly elevated dents or dimples along lower edge.
