French Poplar Trees in the Mist
Oil on canvas
20 x 12 1/8 inches
Circa 1900
As published in:
Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection
Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection
As exhibited in:
Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection, 2015–2018
A proficient art student in Cincinnati, Willie Betty Newman abandoned her husband and child to study in Paris. She gained early recognition at the Salon, where her work was regularly exhibited between 1891 and 1900. During summer months, she frequently traveled to Brittany, a quaint setting for her impressionistic landscapes and genre scenes laced with religious overtones.
Like other women artists, Newman faced discrimination; one critic wrote: “she paints vigorously and powerfully, with an almost masculine touch.” She often signed her paintings W. B. Newman to mask her gender, a challenge compounded by the ambiguity of her maiden name, Betty. Such a signature appears in the lower right of French Poplar Trees in the Mist.
Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection, 2018–2021
During a decade spent in France, Willie Betty Newman attended the Académie Julian, traveled the rural regions seeking inspiration, and successfully submitted paintings to the prestigious Paris Salon. With its sun-dappled light, saturated color, and broken brushstrokes, French Poplar Trees in the Mist reflects the artist’s connection to the French Impressionists—an association heightened by her depiction of the tall trees that line the country’s roads and are hallmarks of many canvases by Claude Monet. After returning to Nashville, Newman established an eponymous school and became a vocal proponent for visual culture in the South, which she declared to be “the natural and logical home of all true art.”