Hood Museum of Art

Strokes of a Brush

by Kate Driscoll

Edmund C. Tarbell is amazing at creating character from just some strokes of a brush, and different color of oil paints. Tarbell is Boston painter who responsible for this brilliant piece of artwork. He was a founding member of the group Ten American Painters. He also was an instructor at his previous school, Boston Museum School. Tarbell received a degree in honors from Dartmouth College in 1929. He later moved from pieces similar to this artwork to other more formal, posed portraits of young women, often his own family members.

The art, My Family in Cotuit created by Tarbell was made in about 1990. This piece is installed in the Hood Museum located at Dartmouth College. The artwork was placed in the American Art exhibit of the Hood Museum. The people that would come to the Hood Museum to see this riveting artwork would value family because that is the main focus of this piece. Also, people in the dead of winter, who wish for the ocean and the summer breeze would also appreciate this marvelous piece because the setting and background of this visual art is the ocean with its white caps.

Tarbell painted his wife and children in this work of art. The painting, My Family in Cotuit contained only bright colors. His children and wife had white clothing on, except for one child, who had on a mainly pink dress with strokes of red, blue, and yellow mixed in. His wife had a ribbon tied around her neck, and waist as well. He did a lot with reflections and sunlight with this piece. Tarbell did a lot of the clothing and the umbrella in white, but added slashes of blue, and yellow to add more character to the piece. He used the tiniest bit of detail with the ocean by adding whitecaps to make the water look more like an ocean with its imperfects in that it is never completely still. One of the curious things about this piece is that there is a strip of colors like yellow and red, which is not part of the ocean. It was interpreted that it was perhaps a sandbar far off in the distance.

Tarbell was a genius on how he put the expected colors in like white with clothing, but adding in colors like red and yellow that would not have usually been part of a white piece of clothing. Tarbell brought out the character in this art with mixing in slashes of red and yellow, which are not in the clothing or grass originally.