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WALTER GRIFFIN
(American, 1861-1935)
Portrait of a Young Girl, 1889
Oil on linen
10 3/4 x 8 5/8”
Purchase: The Herman Lee and Nell Stuart Donovan Memorial Endowment and the University of Kentucky Annual Giving Fund 1979.27

The American Impressionist Walter Griffin is appreciated for his brilliant, jewel-like colors and energetic brushstrokes. Although he spent the majority of his life in France, Griffin was born in Portland, Maine and was educated in the Northeast. He studied art at the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston and later in New York City at the National Academy of Design, where he became friendly with William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, and Willard Metcalf, all of whom were later identified as American Impressionists. In 1887, Griffin sailed to Europe to study in and around Paris. He became a regular visitor to the studio of Barbizon painter Jean-François Millet, whose paintings of peasant themes had an enduring influence on the younger artist. This vibrant and sentimental portrait dates to Griffin’s early years in France and reveals the artist’s amalgamation of the peasant subject matter of Millet and the Barbizon School with the bright colors and shimmering brushstrokes of the Impressionist technique.