Portrait of Mrs. Abbey in pink dress
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Edwin Austin Abbey painted this portrait of his wife Gertrude around 1896, in pastel on dark paper. Gertrude Mead married Abbey in 1890 and became a fierce steward of his legacy after his death in 1911 — she donated his archive to Yale, established the Abbey Memorial Scholarships for painters at the British School at Rome, and endowed a mural prize through the National Academy of Design. In the portrait, she looks directly out at the viewer, her face carefully modeled against quick, loose strokes of red-pink chalk that make up the high-collared dress. The dark ground shows through everywhere, giving the whole thing a sketchy immediacy.