Edmund Charles Tarbell

A feisty, aggressive man, Edmund Charles Tarbell had such control over a group of followers at the Boston Museum School that critics nicknamed them" the Tarbellite gang." Tarbell also commanded respect later in Washington, D.C., when he served as principal at the Corcoran Gallery's School of Art from 1918 to 1925. His insistence upon precise draftsmanship resulted from his teenaged apprenticeship to a lithographic company and his academic studies in Boston and Paris .Edmund Charles Tarbell was born April 26, 1862 in West Groton, Massachusetts and raised by his grandparents in the Boston suburb of Dorchester. He showed an early aptitude for drawing, studied briefly at the Massachusetts Normal School (1877 - 1878), and at the age of fifteen was apprenticed at the Forbes Lithographic Company. After three years at Forbes, Tarbell entered the Boston Museum School where he befriended fellow students Frank W. Benson (1862 - 1951) and Robert Reid (1862 - 1929), and studied under Otto Grundmann (1844 - 1890) and Frederick Crowninshield (1845 - 1918). In 1884, Tarbell joined Benson and Reid at the Academie Julian in Paris. Among his teachers were Gustave Boulanger (1824 - 1888), Jules-Joseph Lefebvre (1836 - 1911), Adolphe William Bouguereau (1825 - 1888), and the American expatriate William Turner Dannat (1853 - 1929). In France, Tarbell became aware of the work of the Impressionists and was able to study at length paintings by Old Masters in the collection of the Louvre. Before returning to America, Tarbell and Benson traveled through Italy and England.

Edmund Charles Tarbell Images:
Amethyst
In the Orchard, 1891
Mother and Child in a Boat
Portrait of Eleanor Hyde Phillips
Thoroughbred with Jockey Up
Three Sisters-A Study In June Sunlight,1890