Virginia Keane Bryce (July 6, 1861 – September 13, 1935) was an American portrait painter.
Virginia Keane Bryce | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 6, 1861  Richmond |
| Died | September 13, 1935 (aged 74) Richmond |
| Occupation | Artist |
| Spouse(s) | Clarence Archibald Bryce |
| Parent(s) |
|
Life and career
editVirginia Keane Bryce was born on July 6, 1861 in Richmond, Virginia, during the American Civil War. She was the daughter of Hugh Payne Keane, the son of a sugar planter and slave owner on St. Vincent, and Jeannette Gradé, a French woman he met in New York.[1]
In 1874, she began studying at the Ecolé Balleroy, a finishing school in Paris. She studied art under the painter Jean-Léon Gérôme until she returned to Richmond in 1878. In Richmond, she taught art students and painted portraits.[1]
In 1881, her portrait of President James Monroe, a copy of James Bogle's copy of the portrait by Gilbert Stuart, was hung in the Virginia State Capitol.[1]
In 1885, she married Dr. Clarence Archibald Bryce, whom she met when he set her mother's broken arm. They had four daughters and one son, who was killed in World War I.[1] She painted a portrait of her husband, now owned by the Virginia Historical Society, called Charity Patient, in which he tends to an elderly African-American female patient. Carrie Meitzner Akard writes that the painting embodies the "paternalistic devotion towards former slaves that many whites like to glorify" following the Civil War.[2]
Virginia Keane Bryce died on 13 September 1935 in Richmond.[3]
References
edit- ^ a b c d James, G. Watson Jr. (January 1955). "The Story Behind Virginia's Official Portrait of James Monroe". Virginia and the Virginia Record: 18–19, 60.
- ^ Akard, Carrie Meitzner (December 1997). Southern Genre Painting and Illustration from 1830 to 1890. University of North Texas.
- ^ "Mrs. C. A. Bryce, Noted Artist, Is Buried Here". Richmond Times-Dispatch. 15 Sep 1935. p. 6.