IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more.
This media is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions). You can copy, modify, and distribute this work without contacting the Smithsonian. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Terms of Use page.
Alternate Title
Edith Jones at age 5
Artist
Edward Harrison May, 1824 - 1887
Sitter
Edith Wharton, 24 Jan 1862 - 11 Aug 1937
Date
1870
Type
Painting
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Stretcher: 73 x 60.3 x 3.8cm (28 3/4 x 23 3/4 x 1 1/2")
Frame: 89.5 x 71.1 x 7.6cm (35 1/4 x 28 x 3")
Topic
Nature & Environment\Plant\Flower
Edith Wharton: Female
Edith Wharton: Education and Scholarship\Scholar\Historian
Edith Wharton: Literature\Writer\Novelist
Edith Wharton: Pulitzer Prize
Edith Wharton: Legion of Honor
Portrait
Credit Line
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; This portrait was adopted by members of the National Portrait Gallery Commission in honor of Dan Okrent, chairman, 2004–8.
Restrictions & Rights
CC0
Object number
NPG.82.136
Exhibition Label
Born New York City
Before embarking on her celebrated writing career, Edith Newbold Jones Wharton experienced a privileged childhood as a member of New York City’s social elite. Extensive European travel was an important element of that lifestyle. Between the ages of four and ten, Wharton sojourned with her family in Italy, Spain, and France. While eight-year-old Edith was living in Paris, the Anglo-American artist Edward Harrison May painted this portrait.
Although Wharton would later chronicle the frustrations of her childhood, it was during the European trips of her youth that she came to enjoy “making up”—inventing the fictional worlds she would write about as an adult. From the mid-1890s, Wharton spent much of her life abroad, where she formed friendships with other American expatriates, such as Henry James. Yet she owed her fame to incisive depictions of New York’s upper class, as in the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Age of Innocence (1920).
Nacida en la Ciudad de Nueva York
Antes de su celebrada carrera literaria, Edith Newbold Jones Wharton tuvo una niñez privilegiada dentro de la élite social de Nueva York. Un aspecto importante de esa vida fueron los extensos viajes por Europa. Entre los cuatro y diez años de edad, Wharton vivió con su familia en Italia, España y Francia. El artista angloamericano Edward Harrison May le pintó este retrato a los ocho años, en París.
Aunque Wharton luego relataría las frustraciones de su infancia, fue en aquellas estadías juveniles en Europa que empezó a disfrutar la “invención” de mundos ficticios que luego abordaría en sus escritos de adulta. Desde mediados de la década de 1890, pasó gran parte de su vida en el extranjero e hizo amistad con otros expatriados estadounidenses, entre ellos Henry James. No obstante, debe su fama a sus penetrantes descripciones de la clase alta neoyorquina, como en La edad de la inocencia (1920), su novela ganadora del Premio Pulitzer.
Provenance
The sitter’s parents; the sitter; bequest to her niece Mrs. Beatrix Farrand, Bar Harbor Maine; sitter’s godson Colin Clark, England, [son of Kenneth Clark];(Zeitlin & Ver Brugge, Los Angeles); purchased 1982 NPG
Letter from Jacob Zeitlin to Robert G. Stewart, 12 July 1982. Whatron stipulated in her will [1937] that her niece give the portrait tot Kenneth Clark’s son, her godson Colin. A photograph at Yale University, Beinecke Library, documents the portrait in her parents’ house in Newport, Rhode Island. See also correspondence with Erica Donnis, Curator of Collections, The Mount, Lenox, Mass. NPG curatorial file.
