Lawton Parker (1868-1954) was an American impressionist painter. A farm-boy from Kearney, Nebraska, Lawton Silas Parker began his training at the Art Institute of Chicago as a teenager.
In 1888, he went to Paris, where he met the stringent entrance requirements for the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts; he later transferred to the Académie Julian, a favorite among American art students.
One of Parker’s paintings was juried into the Paris Salon exhibition of 1890.
In the following decade, he led a peripatetic life that included further study at the Art Students League in New York City and in Paris; teachings stints in St. Louis, Chicago, New York, Paris, and Beloit, Wisconsin; and work on commissioned portraits and a mural.
The present study is undated and the model unidentified. A young girl is represented in profile, seated cross-legged beside a stream, reading a book. Her dress is difficult to pin down, reading more as picturesque costume than as a contemporary garment. There is no horizon to provide context, the picture plane is tipped up so that the water provides the reflective background, and there is a sense created of an enclosed natural space. This is consistent with Sargent’s figure studies of the period, which are usually placed against an aqueous, rather than an aerial, backdrop.
[Christie’s, London - Oil on canvas, 61 x 50.8 cm]
![John Singer Sargent - Girl Reading by a Stream [c.1888]](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51268120584_52c16cd0e1_c.jpg)
![Maxime Maufra - Still Life [1904]](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51242832567_e7202f4055_c.jpg)
