Ratings and values of paintings by Cecilia Beaux

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Rating and value of artist Cecilia Beaux     

Cecilia Beaux is an artist known to lovers of Impressionist canvases. Now, prices for her works are rising at the auctioneers' gavel.

Her oils on canvas are particularly prized, especially by American buyers, and the price at which they sell on the art market ranges from €90 to €326,250, a large delta but one that speaks volumes about the value that can be attributed to the artist's works.

In 2019, his oil on canvas Ethel Page as Undine, was sold for €326,250, while it was estimated at between €53,000 and €70,000. Her quotation is stable.

Order of value from a simple work to the most prestigious

The style and technique of Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux (1855 - 1942) was an American Impressionist portrait painter who developed a style combining the American tradition of realism with European, particularly French, painterly elegance.

She is often compared to John Singer Sargent, and differs from them in a more poised, analytical and intimate approach to the model. The artist uses oil paint with great mastery, light impasto, glaze and gentle transitions between tones.

The artist often works with successive layers and a rigorous basic drawing that she inherited from her academic training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, constantly seeking total unity and balance between colored mass and drawing.

Light is diffused, soft and often lateral, allowing her to sculpt faces with delicacy, without ever hardening the features. She also works with the chiaroscuro inherited from the Old Masters, but lightened by a clear, luminous palette and often dominated by cool whites, beiges and blues.

Her work shows a particular interest in the effects of fabric, texture and matter, which give her paintings an almost tangible, tactile quality. She does not seek resemblance alone, since her portraits exude an inner dimension and a strong psychological presence.

Facial expressions are measured, attitudes natural, often in a domestic and intellectual setting, which often allows the model's social or intellectual status to be respected.

Although the artist's work is rooted in a classical tradition, she introduces a modern sensibility into her painting, capturing the individual in his or her truth, without emphasis or idealism. She breaks with strict academicism, favoring observation, restrained expression and the truth of the ordinary gesture.

The life of Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux was born in Philadelphia in 1855, into a family of French origin. She lost her mother shortly after birth, and was raised by her grandparents in a cultured environment that encouraged her to learn art.

She took drawing classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, then continued her training as a self-taught artist, while teaching drawing for a living. She also studied briefly in France in 1888 at the Académie Julian, where she discovered the European masters and refined her style.

She began exhibiting in the 1880s, and was soon favorably received by American critics. Cecilia Beaux painted portraits of high society personalities, intellectuals, scientists and artists, while maintaining a very personal approach.

Cecilia Beaux refused marriage to devote herself to her art, which enabled her to pursue a free career, focused on technical excellence and observation. She became one of the first women to teach at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, training several generations of artists.

Considered during her lifetime to be the greatest American portrait painter, she is often compared to Sargent, Whistler and Mary Casatt. She traveled regularly in Europe (France, Italy, England) to study the old and contemporary masters.

Stays in Paris reinforced her taste for refined composition, nuanced light and psychological portraiture, in the tradition of French painters. She continued to paint well into old age, despite health problems.

The artist published her memoirs, Backgroung with Figures, in 1930, in which she looks back on her life as a woman artist in a male-dominated world. She died in 1942, aged 87.

She is recognized today as one of the great figures of American art, and a pioneer in the institutional recognition of women artists.

Focus on Sita and Sarita (Young Girl with Cat), Cecilia Beaux

In this painting (oil on canvas - approx. 127 x 101 cm), produced between 1893 and 1894, Cecilia Beaux depicts a young girl (her cousin) holding a small black cat in her arms. The two gazes, that of the girl and the cat, look at the viewer.

She structures the portrait in a bust, slightly off-center, framed at mid-body in a calm, frontal posture. The background is reduced to a light, almost neutral background, accentuating the dark silhouette and the intensity of the glances.

Masses are present and highly contrasting (bright whites, deep blacks) that structure the painting graphically. Both the girl and the cat look straight out of the frame, creating an unsettling duality between human and animal.

The cat seems to reflect the young woman's emotions, reinforcing the portrait's mystery and density. The model's expression, restrained and distant, contributes to the atmosphere of calm tension.

The palette is reduced but extremely refined with black, ivory, touches of ochre and pale pink in the face. The light comes from the front, smoothing surfaces without flattening them, and modeling the face with great subtlety. The contrast between the black dress and the light background creates an almost sculptural effect.

The strokes are precise and fused, with an absence of visible textures, giving the painting great visual clarity. The drawing is rigorous in the structure of the face, but free in the textile materials and shadows, which soften the whole.

This work shows a delicate relationship between academic mastery and the poetics of expectation and silence. The painting has a double reading, since it is both a simple social portrait and can also be interpreted as an allegory of the feminine, of solitude and interiority.

Beaux offers here a portrait without idealization or anecdote, taut in psychological realism and emotional restraint. The modernity is discreet, a woman looking, rather than being looked at, with a cat as her double.

Cecilia Beaux's imprint on her period

Cecilia Beaux established herself as the first renowned female portraitist in the United States, in a field then largely dominated by men particularly in ceremonial portraiture.

Her work was hailed by critics as equal to, if not superior to, her male counterparts, notably John Sargen or William Merritt Chase.

She was the first woman to teach full-time at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1895), becoming a role model for generations of American artists.

At a time when American art was torn between academism, impressionism and decorative art. Beaux maintains a subtle balance between tradition and modernity. She defends a psychological portrait, without emphasis, that favors inner truth over worldly virtuosity.

Her measured, elegant style thus becomes a reference point for those seeking an alternative to the glitz and glam of social prestige. Cecilia Beaux traveled regularly to Europe, exhibited in Paris, London and Venice and acted as an ambassador of cultivated American taste.

She embodied the intellectual openness of an American elite turned towards France, at a time when tensions existed between conservatism and modernity in the art world.

She is a pioneer of the professional status of women artists, rejecting social conventions that limit women to the domestic sphere; she is single, independent, a teacher and leads a free career.

Her example inspires other female artists to live their art without pillar to assigned roles (including Violet Oakley, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Yvonne Canu and Berthe Morisot)

In her memoirs, she expresses herself on her condition in her memoirs published in 1930, which have become an important text in the social history of art. Her work went through a period of relative oblivion in the middle of the 20th century.

Recognizing the artist's signature

Cecilia Beaux doesn't necessarily sign her works. Copies may exist, which is why expertise remains important.

Knowing the value of a work

If you happen to own a work by or after Cecilia Beaux, don't hesitate to request a free appraisal using our form on our website.

A member of our team of experts and certified auctioneers will contact you promptly to provide you with an estimate of the market value of your work, as well as ad hoc information about it.

If you are considering selling your work, you will also be accompanied by our specialists in order to benefit from alternatives for selling it at the best possible price, taking into account market inclinations.