i need to know more about the painting SOPHISTICATION, can you tell me about it?

Question

the painting was painted by HARRY WILLSION WATOUS....title of painting SOPHISTICATION....painted between the years of 1857-1940...he describes it as "a cup of tea, a cigarette and she"...that's about all the info that i have.....what period of art do you think it relates to?

Answer 1

According to one source,(AskArt) Watrous was a student of the french academic school, and was influenced by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, William Bouguereau and Jean Leon Gerome. These artists eschewed the impressionists and and are generally considered neo-classical and/or romantic style.

Notwithstanding the above, his painting Sophistication does have a very impressionistic air to it.

Answer 2

This painting by Watrous is in the Haggen Museum, California. It was painted about 1908. As you know, it shows in profile an elegantly young woman, dressed in a fashionable black costume and hat,. She sits at a table, cigarette in hand.
There is v. little info available re Watrous except that he was born in San Fransciso. In 1881, he went to Paris for five years and studied at the Julian Academy and was influenced by French painter Jean Louis Meissonier (who may have been his teacher),- although the influence is not clear to me.
The painting Sophistication seems to belong to a period late in the 19th/ early in the 20th century when American artists such as Mary Cassat and John Singer Sargent were producing realist paintings connected to a lesser or greater extent to the American version of French Impressionism. Recalling, the woman who was Watrous' model for Sophistication is a famous portrait of an elegant woman in a decollete black gown that Sargent painted in 1884 (and which caused a scandal). Perhaps you would like to look at it: .
See http://www.lynetteabel.org/Art.html