ca. 1898
American
oil on canvas
United States
Overall (Unframed): 75 1/8 × 50 5/8 in. (190.82 × 128.59 cm)
Framed: 85 × 59 3/4 × 3 in. (215.9 × 151.77 × 7.62 cm)
2013.172
This striking figure painting by Frederick MacMonnies – an active member of the expatriate art colony in Giverny, France – was made after a trip to Spain to study the revered paintings of Diego Velázquez. The experience inspired a series of MacMonnie’s own monumental canvases, of which Young Chevalier is the most impressive and theatrical. Believed to depict Grenville Hunter – the nearly six-year-old half-brother to painter Ellen Emmet, one of MacMonnies’s students – the picture is a bravura artistic statement revealing the influence of Old Master Spanish painting on American expatriates by way of the French avant-garde, specifically, Edouard Manet.
Gilded Age; Impressionism
BORGHI & Co./Fine Art Dealers /CC#2027 ; Teh Jordan -Volpe Gallery ; James Graham and Sons label; #C42543
J. Harwood and Louise B. Cochrane Fund for American Art
2021: "Americans in Spain: Painting and Travel, 1820-1920", Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, February 12 - May 16, 2021; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI, June 11 - October 3, 2021.

Jordan Volpe Gallery, Madison Avenue, New York
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC

Some object records are not complete and do not reflect VMFA's full and current knowledge. VMFA makes routine updates as records are reviewed and enhanced.