Gertrude

Gertrude Schirmer was about ten years old when Frank Weston Benson painted this portrait in her home in West Manchester, Massachusetts, a small town north of Boston. Years later Gertrude remembered how impressed she was that Benson, an important painter and teacher at the Boston Museum School, had ridden his bicycle from nearby Salem to West Manchester for the sittings. Gertrude's father, Gustav Schirmer, was president of one of the oldest music publishing houses in America, and Gertrude grew up in a musical and affluent environment. Benson suggests the family's wealth by including a glimpse of the cabriole leg of an eighteenth-century high chest in the background. Gertrude wears her best dress and shoes and sits in a rocking chair, but the demands of sitting for a portrait are apparent in her expression of dutiful concentration. The Schirmers gave Benson more latitude than usual in constructing the portrait, resulting in a sympathetic portrayal.  In answer to Schirmer's note of thanks, Benson responded, "I have had a great pleasure myself in doing it, more so than often falls my lot....This comes…from the freedom you all allowed me in all ways. Few people know enough to allow such freedom from interference or I think they would always get better pictures." This text was adapted from Carol Troyen and Janet Comey, "Children in American Art" (Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 2007, in Japanese).