Cecilia Beaux (May 1, 1855 – September 17, 1942) was an American activity portraitist, whose subjects included First Lady Edith Roosevelt, Admiral Sir David Beatty and Georges Clemenceau.
Trained in Philadelphia, she went upon to investigation in Paris, strongly influenced by two classical painters Tony Robert-Fleury and William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who avoided objector movements. In turn, she resisted impressionism and cubism, remaining a strongly individual symbolic artist. Her style, however, invited comparisons subsequently John Singer Sargent; at one exhibition, Bernard Berenson joked that her paintings were the best Sargents in the room. She could put on a pedestal her subjects without artifice, and showed great insight into character. Like her instructor William Sartain, she believed there was a relationship between innate characteristics and behavioral traits.
Beaux became the first girl teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She was awarded a gold medal for lifetime expertise by the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and honoured by Eleanor Roosevelt as “the American woman who had made the greatest contribution to the culture of the world”.
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