A young woman writes at a desk and a teenage girl reads a book in an armchair in an opulent room in this nearly square painting. Both women have rosy, peach-colored skin and honey-brown hair. To our left, the woman is shown from the knees up as she sits at a tall, mahogany-red, secretary desk. The desk has an emerald-green, tilted writing surface and two shelves packed with books and covered by glass doors, one of which is open. The desk has brass pulls on the drawers under and behind the writing surface, and the cabinet is topped with two curling scrolls to create a triangular pediment. The…
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Josephine and Mercie

painter Edmund Charles Tarbell (American, 1862 - 1938)

1908

Medium
oil on canvas
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
overall: 71.4 × 81.4 cm (28 1/8 × 32 1/16 in.) ; framed: 105.9 × 116.2 × 10.6 cm (41 11/16 × 45 3/4 × 4 3/16 in.)
Culture
American
Museum
National Gallery of Art, CAB
Credit line
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund, 1909)
Rights
Public domain (NGA Open Access, CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed

View at the National Gallery of Art