The Challenge of Mrs. Beckwith

After researching and presenting on the painting Mrs. Beckwith with Molly for our project, I have realized just how much can be analyzed from a simple painting. I have been to many art museums over the years, but often times do not take the time to appreciate the works or read the descriptions. After having to research a particular painting, I have a greater understanding of how to analyze an artwork and particularly how much you can gain from looking at a piece through the lense of the time period it was created in. We chose this painting because we were very drawn to the woman depicted in it, but there was little information posted with the image, and little to no information online about the piece. This created a challenge that I was not anticipating; in the beginning, I was hoping to choose a painting that had a long synopsis and a plethora of information online about the artist. Although this may have been helpful to some projects, I think this created an interesting perspective for Molly and I to analyze the painting with. We were not hindered by what others thought about the piece and were able to explore many different aspects of the painting from simply a visual perspective. We focused on what her clothes looked like and how exactly she was posed rather than reciting her biography. I believe this is a more challenging way to analyze an artwork, but can also be more beneficial and it forced me to rely on my analytical skills more than my research skills. Our conversation with Ms. Hoyt was also very helpful, and she encourage us to use the Gilded Age to back up our observations and thoughts on the woman. This project was challenging, but it made me realize how much can be observed about a work of art, even those that don’t have long descriptions, which are usually the ones that I normally skip over at a museum.