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About Edward B. Lintott
After a period of versatile training as a painter, British-born Edward Barnard Lintott interrupted his career with political duties, acting as the British Ambassador to Russia. Following his return to art, he demonstrated definite ability in portraiture, still-life, and a variety of other subjects. Lintott traveled widely and enjoyed representation by exclusive art galleries. Although he executed some unusually sensitive works prior to World War I, the bulk of his artistic productivity was later.48 Lintott studied in England and then crossed the Channel to continue at the Académie Julian, then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he refined his ability to draw the human figure.49 Lintott executed portrait studies and works in a plein-air manner during various sketching trips.
Like Louis Kronberg before him, Lintott became fascinated with the ballet and theater as subjects for painting: "The artist-diplomat made much use of the Chancery and Embassy box at the Marinsky Theatre . . . and became personally acquainted with many members of the ‘Corps de Ballet.’"50 In Ballet Girl in Pink, the dancer bends down to lace up her slipper. Naturally, the subject and the nonchalant pose itself prompt one to compare Edgar Degas. The ungainly, stooped- over bather in his pastel, The Tub (The Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT) comes to mind. Yet Degas’ series of dance class pictures have little in common with Lintott’s highly tectonic composition with the centrally placed figure. Light streams through the window of the relatively dark room, illuminates the dancer’s back, defines the contours of her arms and legs, and it brings the highly polished wooden floor to our attention. There is a delightful sense of texture, achieved with controlled brushwork.
After a long and distinguished career in London, Lintott relocated to America in the early years of the Depression. In New York he worked as a portraitist, submitted paintings to various national annuals, and soon enjoyed one-man shows in Chicago, New York, and Boston. His wife, Marie Sterner Lintott, herself a respectable art dealer, was instrumental in the promotion of Lintott’s work. He was also fortunate to have been represented by important art galleries such as M. Knoedler & Co. and Macbeth in New York, as well as by Doll and Richards in Boston. It appears that the artist’s most active period of exhibition was in the decade of the thirties. Lintott became a citizen of the United States, and in the summer of 1942, seventy-seven of his works were mounted for a retrospective exhibition at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He continued to receive praise from critics throughout the forties for his unusually diversified subjects. |
Paintings by Edward B. Lintott
| Ballet Girl in Pink |
| oil on canvas: 30 x 25 inches |
| signed: upper left |
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