Portrait of Dora Wheeler (1882–83): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Dora Wheeler (1882–83) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is William Merritt Chase (American, 1849–1916).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Dora Wheeler became Chase's first student when he returned from overseas study in Munich and set up a teaching studio in New York. At the time, few American artists accepted women as private pupils. After her course of study, Wheeler joined her mother in launching a successful decorating firm, one of the first businesses in the country to be operated entirely by women. For the firm, she designed luxurious textiles, and the embroidered silk tapestry that fills the background in her portrait references her occupational interest. Chase's portrait was awarded a gold medal at an international exhibition of contemporary art in Munich in 1883, and later that year was also shown in Paris. At some later point, the painting was acquired by the sitter, who subsequently donated it to the museum.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Dora Wheeler
• Date: 1882–83
• Creator attribution: William Merritt Chase (American, 1849–1916)
• Culture: America
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 180.6 x 188.6 x 11 cm (71 1/8 x 74 1/4 x 4 5/16 in.); Unframed: 159.8 x 166.4 cm (62 15/16 x 65 1/2 in.)
• Collection: American - Painting
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1921.1239

A detail from the museum

Chase and Wheeler worked together to raise money for constructing the Statue of Liberty's pedestal.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Boudinot Keith in memory of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade

Further reading listed by the museum

• Stein, Roger B. "The Aesthetic Craze." ARTnews 48, no. 8 (December 1986): 3 ;100-105.
• Connor, Holly Pyne, Newark Museum, McNay Art Museum, and Frick Art & Historical Center. Off the Pedestal : New Women in the Art of Homer, Chase, and Sargent. Newark, N.J., New Brunswick, N.J.: Newark Museum ; Rutgers University Press, 2006.
• Van Hook, Bailey, "Decorative Images of American Women: The Aristocratic Aesthetic of the Late Nineteenth Century," Smithsonian Studies in American Art 4 (Winter 1990).

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.