American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists

Mary Tarleton Knollenberg (1904-1992) was an American sculptor who worked primarily in bronze, stone and plaster. Her artwork focused on the human form, essentially female nudes which she would elegantly simplify by using the “direct carving” technique that Heinz Warneke –one of her teachers at East Haddam– had adopted. 

Originally from Long Island, Tarleton grew up in prosperity on her father's–a prominent lawyer–thirty-two-acre estate. When her parents divorced, she followed her mother to Montclair, New Jersey where she graduated from an all girls' high school. In the fall of 1922, she enrolled in Mahonri Young's class at the American School of Sculpture. Two years later, at age 21, she followed him to Paris along with fellow female student, Hester Bancroft. She financed her trip partially through the sale of three horse sculptures, her first original work which Young thoroughly encouraged and promoted. While in Paris, she enrolled at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and studied under Émile Antoine Bourdelle. She would return to Paris on a Guggenheim fellowship in 1933 and in 1934.

Mahonri Young proved to be a decisive mentor for Tarleton, who confessed: “He believed in me (…) He became everything to me–teacher, lover, father.” After several years of relationship, the pair eventually split, Mary later recalling “I told him I wanted to be free to go my own way and would not continue our relationship as before." Yet, Young remained a loyal and helpful patron; during her convalescence in 1928, he kept her career alive by supervising the casting of several of her pieces in New York, sending her materials and words of encouragement. Tarleton would later reminisce: “All through this Hon had been a faithful friend and supporter, coming often to see me at the hospital, coming out to Great Neck etc. I certainly needed him then, and all during the two years spent in Shepherdstown, my correspondence with him was one of the main things that kept up my heart and courage."

Tarleton would eventually meet and marry a man twelve years her senior, Bernhard Knollenberg, a noted New York lawyer and respected historian on George Washington. As he was also a librarian at New Haven’s Sterling Memorial Library, Knollenberg helped Mary exhibit her work at Yale University. Married for 35 years, they lived together in Chester, Connecticut, where Tarleton died on December 21, 1992, age 88. Today, her sculpted portrait of Reginald Marsh is on display at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and a marble bust of Lincoln Kirstein is on permanent display at the New York City Ballet in Lincoln Center.

The present painting was executed by Guy Pène du Bois in the mid-1930s, before Tarleton would meet her husband. Mary and Guy were romantically involved for several years, and their correspondence attesting to it is in the National Archives Museum. In her portrait, Tarleton appears a strong, tall and strikingly beautiful blonde. Her nonchalant pose, as well as her fierce gaze, which is turned away from the viewer, speaks to her strong will and temper. Nothing in the portrait alludes to her status as a sculptor; there is no bust in sight, no studio nor a working blouse. Instead, she stands as a modern woman, freed from any characterization and utterly independent. 

The present work is characteristic of Pène du Bois' style from the 1930s, following his return from Paris to the United States. At the time, the artist had started a teaching position at the Arts Students League, and began painting more portraits of women, often posing alone in a chair, their face either concealed or falsely modest. Here, the work exhibits a very sculptural form, brighter colors as well as loose brushwork. Still, it contains an air of mystery and tension that usually imbue Pène du Bois' figure portraits, and which here speak to the difficult relationship between the artist and his model, who decided to call off their affair before the portrait was finished.