| Object ID |
1989.62 |
| Object Name |
Painting |
| Dimensions |
H-78 W-38 inches |
| Early Date |
1906 |
| Late Date |
1906 |
| Made By |
Lorenzo Hatch |
| Description |
Lorenzo Hatch came to Dorset, Vermont, in the 1870s as a small boy, his mother having moved the family there after the death of her husband. After finishing school he went to work for a watchmaker in nearby Salem, New York, where he also learned the art of engraving. His considerable talent became apparent and his friends encouraged him to study bank note engraving in Washington, DC; shortly thereafter he started work for the federal government. In 1888 he relocated to Chicago, and met his wife Grace Harrison, a talented young pianist and a great-granddaughter of President Benjamin Harrison, at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The couple moved to New York where Hatch worked for the International Bank Note Company and studied with Robert Henri at the New School of Art, where he turned his attention to portrait and landscape painting. In 1908 he went to China at the request of the Chinese government to begin a bureau of engraving; he designed most of China’s paper money from 1908 to his death in 1914. Throughout his life, he consistently returned to Dorset to paint in the small studio behind his family’s house. He was also instrumental in the foundation of the Southern Vermont Art Center in nearby Manchester.
In addition to engraving, Hatch was also adept with the brush. This painting of his wife echoes the style of other American artists of the time such as James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent. The simple, monochrome palette, crisp white outfit, stark background, and straightforward stance recall Sargent’s portrait of Mrs. I. N. Phelps Stokes (1897; The Metropolitan Museum of Art). The painting hung in the Bennington Museum for many years with the simple title, Woman in White. In 1981, Martha Coolidge Harwood, who had worked for the Hatch family during the summer of 1944, positively identified the subject Grace Harrison Hatch. |
| Credit |
Gift of the Hatch Estate |
|
