+ Expand

Description: FIVE O'CLOCK TEA signed " JL Stewart " and dated " Paris, 1883-4, " l.r. - - oil on canvas 66 x 91 in. (167.5 x 231.3 cm.) PROVENANCE Kugler's Restaurant, Philadelphia EXHIBITED Paris, Paris Salon, 1884, no. 2241 LITERATURE " Explication des Ouvrages de Peinture, Sculpture, Architecture, Gravure, et Lithographie des Artistes Vivants Exposes su Palais des Champs-Elysees, " Paris, 1884, p. 199 W. C. Brownell, "The American Salon", " The Magazine of Art " London, Paris and New York, 1884, vol. VII, p. 499, illus., opposite, p. 496 "The Paris Salon", " The Art Amateur, " New York, June 1884, vol. XI, no. 1, p. 6 G. W. Paris salon", " The art Amateur, " New York, June 1884, vol. XI, no, 1, p. 6 G. W. Sheldon, " Recent Ideals in American Art, " New York and London, 1888, p. 58 C. Cook, " Art and Artists of Our Time, " New York, 1888, pp. 290-292, illus. opposite, p. 293 " The Connoisseur, " June 1968, p. CXLIV, illus. M. Quick, " American Expatriates of the Late Nineteenth Century, " Dayton, 1976, p. 135 S. C. Joyner, "Julius L. Stewart, Life and Works", Master's Thesis, Hunter College, New York, 1982, p. 26 D. D. Thompson, "Julius L. Stewart, a "Parisian from Philadelphia", " The Magazine Antiques, " Nov. 1986, p. 1052 Julius Stewart arrived in Paris in 1865 and for the next fifty years was known as the "Parisian from Philadelphia". By the mid-1880s, the only American to receive more critical attention at the Salon Exhibitions was John Singer Sargent. The records of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris record that Julius Stewart entered the atelier of Jean-Leon Gerome on May 15, 1873, and Stewart became one of the master's "beloved pupils." He made his debut at the Paris Salon in 1878 with two works, and by 1883 his " Portrait of a Lady " was enthusiastically labeled by " The Art Amateur " "the most sensational American picture of all" at the Salon. However, Stewart established his reputation the next year with " Five O'Clock Tea " which portrayed the leisured life of American expatriates in Paris very much in the spirit of Henry James. " The Art Amateur " reported, "One of the most popular of the American pictures is Jules (sic) Stewart's admirably colored and well-composed " Five O'Clock Tea". " G. W. Sheldon called " Five O'Clock Tea " "the picture which first made him widely known". Clarence Cook mentioned that the expatriate family portrayed by Stewart in " Five O'clock Tea " was American, but the identity of the group has not been established. However, the artist himself has been positively identified as the bearded figure in the upper left-hand corner of the painting. Certainly the family was a prominent and wealthy American clan residing in Paris, no doubt in the circle of other families recorded by Stewart: the family of Anthony J. Drexel, the partner of J. P. Morgan (" After the Wedding, " 1880, Drexel University Museum) or the Vanderbilt family (" The Baptism, " 1892, Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Stewart like his friend, the French genre painter Jean Beraud (1849-1906), specialized in elaborate, multifigured compositions, incorporating celebrities of the day. The French critic Gaston Jollivet notes in 1888 that "between portraits and genre pictures proper, there is a mixed style of composition, partaking of the character of both which excites a two-fold curiosity". Jollivet proceeded to note that Stewart and Beraud were the principal practitioners of this art, and in retrospect J. J. Tissot should be added to their number.. We know the identities of the sitters in several of Stewart's genre- portrait compositions either from contemporary reviews or visual keys that survive. He frequently painted his American friend, the notorious James Gorden Bennett (1841-1918), a publisher and sportsman who established the Paris " Herald, " (now the " International Herald Tribune). " In his best-known composition, " The Hunt Ball " (Essex Club, Newark, New Jersey), Stewart included portraits of several of the great Parisian swells: the Due de Morny, Vicomte de Jange, and the Baron Rothschild. General Rush C. Hawkins (1831-1920), United States commissioner for fine arts to the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris, drolly summarized Stewart's appeal: "He is a painter of thoroughly " chic " portraits of women, and... always produces genteel results. He never paints a woman to be of lower rank than that of baroness, and all his young girls look like daughters of duchesses." Stewart's career mirrored the popular currents of Salon painting in Paris from the end of the Second Empire to the outbreak of World War I. Indeed, Stewart's infatuation with prominent figures of the day placed in elaborate surroundings is nowhere more evident than in " Five O'Clock Tea. ".