In 1911 the department store was a relatively new and important urban institution, and The Shoe Shop depicts the activities of female employees and their customers. Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones rendered this modern subject in a rapid, painterly style, paying particular attention to effects of light and atmosphere. Her early work often represented women in the modern city: nursemaids at home, women strolling in the park, shoppers, and store clerks. Strongly influenced by artist William Merritt Chase, Sparhawk-Jones’s painting constitutes a highly personal vision that drew from both Realism and Impressionism.
Date
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Signed recto, bottom-right, in brown paint: "Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones".
Dimensions
99 × 84.2 cm (38 15/16 × 33 1/8 in.)
Credit Line
The William Owen Goodman and Erna Sawyer Goodman Collection
Reference Number
1939.393
Extended information about this artwork
Art Institute of Chicago,Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture: The Twenty-Fourth Annual Exhibition in the Art Institute of Chicago, November 14 to December 27, 2911, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 1911), cat. 343.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Catalog of the 107th Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, exh. cat. (Philadelpha: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1912), 22, cat. 125.
Judith A. Barter, et al., The Age of American Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 2011), cat. 78.
Anna O. Marley, “Von Cassatt zu O’Keeffe – Der Aufstieg professionaller Künstlerinnen in den USA,” in Es war einmal in Amerika – 300 Jahre US-amerikanische Kunst [Once Upon a Time in America: Three Centuries of American Art], eds. Barbara Schaefer and Anita Hachmann (Cologne: Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud/Wienand Verlag, 2018), 132, fig. 14 (ill.).
Yang Zhigang, ed., Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, exh. cat. (Shanghai: Shanghai Book and Painting Press, 2018), cat. 43.
Shanghai Museum, Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, Sept. 28, 2018–Jan. 6, 2019, cat. 43.
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Women Masters, Old and Modern, Oct. 31, 2023–Feb. 4, 2024, no cat.
Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones (1885–1968), c. 1911; to William Owen Goodman (1848–1936), Chicago, by Feb. 1912; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1939.
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