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About Robert L. Newman
Robert Loftin Newman (1827-1912) was a unique American artist, close to Albert Pinkham Ryder in his artistic sensibilities, and highly gifted. Born in Richmond, Virginia, the young artist studied in Thomas Couture’s atelier in Paris. Although largely self-taught, Newman was well versed in classical European traditions. After he returned to the States, residing mainly in Clarksville, Tennessee, Newman worked as a portrait painter, but his real passion was rendering romantic themes, including traditional Christian iconography, mythology, shipwrecks, and figures in dimly lit woodland areas. Newman fully developed Couture’s concept of the painted sketch into his own poetic, mysterious vision.
Abraham Davidson’s description of Newman’s typical figures (1978, p. 110) applies to Little Red Riding Hood: "These figures are made to seem somehow fragile, and beset by unknown, unseen terrors. . . . The whole scene takes on the character of a strange dream." Newman executed several versions of this theme from Grimm’s fairy tales, which was popular among nineteenth-century artists. While Sir Thomas Lawrence did a portrait of Emily Anderson as Red Riding Hood, thirteen versions of the theme appeared in the New York and Philadelphia annual exhibitions between 1838 and 1866. |
Paintings by Robert L. Newman
| Little Red Riding Hood |
| oil on canvas: 14 x 10 inches |
| signed: lower right |
| date: circa 1885 |
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