Still Life with Porcelain and Grapes is a wonderful example of Rogers’ talent and demonstrates her devotion to the principles of the Boston School tradition, specifically, a balanced composition of round and straight elements, pleasing color relationships, and an effective handling of light and shadow on a variety of surfaces. The inclusion of the blue and white porcelain relates to the popularity of Asian objets d’art found in many fashionable New England homes at the turn of the nineteenth century and, fittingly, in the studios and homes of the region’s artists, including Rogers’ mentor Tarbell, as well as Frank Benson, William McGregor and Elizabeth Paxton, Hermann Dudley Murphy, and Leslie Prince Thompson, all of whom incorporated similar pieces into their still life and interior arrangements.

More information about this painting...

Rogers took part in annual exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago and was a founding member of the Guild of Boston Artists, where she had solo shows in 1917 and 1928. She also exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and in group exhibitions featuring Boston women artists held at the City Art Museum of St. Louis in December 1913 and the Detroit Institute of Arts in April 1914. Despite these accomplishments and the continued success that she experienced well into the 1920s, Rogers gave up her space at Fenway Studios in 1932 and did not produce any known work after that time. The cause of her withdrawal from the art world has been attributed to the effects of the Great Depression on the art market and the strain it caused on the careers of many painters, while the result of her early retirement means examples of Rogers’ work rarely come on the market today.

Provenance:

Private collection, Montclair, New Jersey

By descent to private collection, Wassenaar, Netherlands

Inscription:

(faintly incised on frame verso) Gretchen Rogers / Boston