Mother+and+Child+(Lady+Shannon+and+Kitty)

Date: ca. 1900-1910
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1929/1929.6.109_1a.jpg?itok=xKGVyGGh width="266" height="316" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/mother-and-child-lady-shannon-and-kitty-22194"]] || Title: **Mother and Child (Lady Shannon and Kitty)**

Artist: **James Jebusa Shannon** Born: Auburn, New York 1862 Died: London, England 1923

Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 46 1/4 x 38 7/8 in. (117.5 x 98.7 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of John Gellatly

Accession: 1929.6.109 || In this elegant interior, the artist's lavishly dressed wife and daughter Kitty enjoy a moment of quiet leisure. This cosmopolitan double portrait displays a bold composition as Kitty's figure cuts dramatically across the foreground, leading us back to her mother's exquisite head. This New York-born artist living in Britain enjoyed a stellar reputation and was often compared to another Gilded Age artist, John Singer Sargent.
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In 1886 James Jebusa Shannon married Florence Mary Cartwright and a year later their daughter Kitty was born. He painted them on many occasions and in these more intimate and informal works he expressed his true artistic talent.
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Sir James Jebusa Shannon was one of the outstanding Society Portraitist of his day. His success lay in an ability to paint portraits that appealed to the prevalent aesthetic taste, and these paintings reveal his artistic sensibility, fine sense of color and stylistic bravura.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Born in Auburn, New York, of Irish parentage, he came from a family that had settled in St Catherines, Ontario, by 1875. Shannon took his first art lessons from a local artist, William E Wright. In 1878 he traveled to England and studied at the National Art Training School under Sir Edward Poynter. As Poynter's most gifted pupil, he received commissions from Queen Victoria in 1881 and 1882, and although he had intended to return to the United States, the success of his early works persuaded him to remain in London.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">In 1886 he married Florence Mary Cartwright, and a year later their daughter Kitty was born. He used them as subjects for his paintings on many occasions, and in these more intimate and informal works he expressed his true artistic talent.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">During the mid 1880s, Shannon, together with his fellow American compatriot John Singer Sargent, dominated the field of British portraiture. Shannon's popularity was encouraged by the patronage of Violet Manners, later Marchioness of Granby, and he became the Manners family's favorite artist.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Shannon was a prominent exhibitor at the Royal Academy, the Grosvenor Gallery, the New Gallery and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters. He was a founder member of the New English Art Club in 1886, became a Royal Academician in 1909, was President of the Royal society of Portrait Painters from 1910-1923 and was knighted in 1922.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Following his death, memorial exhibitions were held at the Leicester Galleries in London and the Albright Art Gallery and the Cincinnati Museum, USA.

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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Artist Biography <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">SAAM Collections Page
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