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Anna Belle Crocker (1868-1951), Self Portrait ca. 1926, Oil on panel, Portland Art
Museum
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I was looking on the Internet for some paintings by Frank
Vincent Dumond when I came across something special, something extraordinary --
a self-portrait by one of his former students at The Art Students League of New
York, Anna Belle Crocker, 1868-1961. Now
none of us have ever heard of this woman in the context of her art career, and
I’m not about to track down decent images of any more of her paintings, which
would be an enormous task from the look of things. But her vivacious self-portrait is just one
more example of how superior the portrait painters of the past were to those
professing to practice this profession today.
Why do we spend any time at all considering the work of
today’s portrait artists, who think their work is done if they render an exact
image of the sitter as photographically as possible, whether working from photos
or from life. Ms. Crocker’s
self-portrait, painted when she was around 58 years old, is the kind of head
John Singer Sargent himself might have painted.
The handling of those glasses and the pupils of her twinkling eyes are right
out of his playbook. Her delightful
expression, caught when it appears she had been amused by something and had
held in her breath waiting to reply, her nostrils slightly flared, is utterly
captivating and convincing.
Let’s face it, animated, true-to-life portraiture left the
building with Sargent, Zorn, Orpen and their contemporaries; there is no doubt
about that. Even the 19th
Century Academic Realists like Bouguereau managed to paint heads from life that
conveyed the message that there was an active brain behind the face mask,
something no contemporary portrait artist or academic wannabes seem willing or
able to accomplish. Why won’t today's painters
concede that their rendering techniques, so blatantly promoted for all the
world to see in YouTube videos, are far less important than the sitter’s mind
in creating a successful portrait?
At any rate, despite ample evidence of her painterly skills from
that one brilliant self-portrait, Ms. Crocker’s noteworthy legacy was not
gained from her painting, but from her long association with the Portland
Art Museum, where she served as the
chief curator and director from 1909 until her retirement in 1936. She was a frequent lecturer there, as well,
and founded the museum’s docent program.
During those years, she also ran the museum’s art school, now named the
Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Anna Belle Crocker was born in Milwaukee,
but the family moved to Portland in
1878 when she was 10 years old. She
began studying art as a teen, and became one of the few women admitted to the
museum art school in 1891. She made two trips
to New York to study at the Art
Students League, first in 1904 and again in 1908, after which she was asked to become
curator of the Portland Museum
by banker William Ladd, one of the founders of the museum. She had worked as his secretary while she was
studying art in Portland. Somebody on the Internet noted humorously that
Portland had found its new museum
director in the typing pool. It turned
out to be a very good find for the city.
To prepare for her new job, Ms. Crocker embarked on journeys
to study museums in New York and Europe,
where she became aware of the modernist trends sweeping the continent, and she embraced
them. Back in Portland,
she brought many touring exhibits to the museum, including one in 1913 that
featured Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase and related modernist works famously
shown at the New York Armory earlier that year.
They say Ms. Crocker remained a dedicated artist,
concentrating on portraits and still lifes, but certainly her artistic
endeavors took second place to her museum duties, which she carried out with
great energy and passion. The author of
a blog called Fifty Two Pieces wrote that Ms. Crocker “worked relentlessly on
behalf of the Museum” during her 27 years as director and curator. ”She was one beautiful, smart, strong woman. There are not enough adjectives to
describe Anna Belle Crocker,” wrote the blogger.
I know. I’ve just seen
her self-portrait.
