Attributed to Rose Lamb (1843-1927) American, Oil on Canvas. A portrait of a gallant figure. Unsigned. Attribution on label on back, with information including the provenance and title: "The Toreador." 

Overall Size: 18 x 12 in. 

Sight Size: 16 x 9 1/2 in. 

#5301  

Rosanna “Rose” Duncan Lamb was born in 1843 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her family was prominent in the community, and she was able to focus on art from an early age. She became a student of William Morris Hunt in the 1870s, concentrating on portraiture. She exhibited to the public infrequently, but her portraits were in high demand from members of the Boston elite and she particularly excelled at painting children. She made several trips to Europe to study and gather inspiration, and beginning in 1884 she was a drawing instructor at the South Boston School of Art. She was friends with the poet Celia Thaxter and after Thaxter’s death she and Annie Adams Fields edited and published Thaxter’s letters. Letters to her from Mary Cassatt and Childe Hassam are in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and Lamb’s own papers are at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art which have revealed a great deal about the artist’s work, philosophy, and experience. Around 1900 she gave up painting after an illness from which she never fully recovered, and she passed away in her home in 1927. Given that almost all her work is held in private collections, most of what is known about her today comes from the collection donated to the Smithsonian by Aimee and Rosamond Lamb, her nieces.