LEWISTON — Erica Hirshler, Ph.D., senior curator of American paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, will give an illustrated lecture at the Lewiston Public Library on Sunday, Nov. 6.
Hirshler, daughter of Lewiston resident Dr. Eric Hirshler and the late Marilyn Nair Hirshler, is a leading international scholar on American painting of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Her topic is “Americans in Paris: John Singer Sargent and the Daughters of Edward D. Boit.”
The free program will take place at 2 p.m. in the library’s Callahan Hall as part of the annual meeting of the Friends of the Lewiston Public Library.
Hirshler is particularly interested in issues of national identity and the artistic exchange between the United States and Europe during that time.
She has published extensively on Sargent and Dennis Bunker, as well as on women artists and collectors. She has lectured at museums and other cultural institutions across the United States and abroad.
Hirshler’s most recent book is the critically acclaimed “Sargent’s Daughters: The Biography of a Painting,” which reveals the facets of Sargent’s greatest masterpiece, “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit.” This painting, which depicts four young girls in a shadowy interior, has haunted viewers since its unveiling in Paris in December 1882. Some early critics were baffled by it; others praised its modernity.
Novelist Henry James described it as the “happy play-world of a family of charming children,” but today’s audiences often find the scene a penetrating essay on the psychology of childhood.
Hirshler holds a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College and a Ph.D from Boston University. She organized and wrote accompanying books for these exhibitions: “A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston 1870–1940” and “Dennis Miller Bunker: American Impressionist;” and she has contributed to several other shows, among them “The Lure of Italy,” “John Singleton Copley,” “Mary Cassatt,” “John Singer Sargent,” “Edmund Tarbell,” “Childe Hassam,” “Impressionism Abroad: Boston and French Painting,” “Americans in Paris” and “Sargent and the Sea.”
A book signing will follow the lecture. For more information, contact 513-3135 or LPLReference@LewistonMaine.gov.
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- Arts scholar Dr. Erica Hirshler stands in front of John Singer Sargent’s painting, “The Daughters of Edward Darling Boit.” On Sunday, Nov. 6, at the Lewiston Public Library, she will give an illustrated lecture on the masterpiece and the artist’s works in Paris in the 19th century.
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