Portrait of Cecilia Tower was one of Shannon’s early mature works, painted and exhibited the year immediately following his first major critical success. He became best known for his portraits of women, and the museum’s painting is characteristic of the type of decorative figure painting that brought him fame. Cecilia Tower is presented in neutral surroundings, allowing her dignified attitude, handsome attire, and the large size of the canvas to convey her social importance.
Following Whistler in viewing a portrait first as a work of art and typical of progressive artists allied with the Aesthetic movement, Shannon held that portraiture was more than merely reproducing a physical likeness of the sitter. In his portraits of women the refined beauty of all the formal elements-color, line, and composition-suggest elegance and wealth. Cecilia Tower wears a fashionable silk evening gown and a boa. The painting is an orchestration of gray tints. Shannon preferred a palette of softly modulated tones, and the lavenders and pearl grays of this canvas, along with pinks, were among his favorite hues. Delicacy of color contributes to the elegance of his portraits. Whistler’s example inspired a host of later artists to employ soft, tonally limited palettes and place their sitters in spare environments and shallow spaces.
Another characteristic of Aesthetic movement portraits found in Cecilia Tower is that of showing the sitter full-length and in life-size. The sitter was a member of the Tower family, landed gentry from Weald Hall in Essex. Cecilia Tower may have been Mrs. Christopher Tower. A portrait by Shannon of a child, Hugh Christopher Tower (unlocated), the son of Christopher Tower, was exhibited in the winter 1890-91 exhibition at the London Institute of Painters in Oil-Colours only a few years after Portrait of Cecilia Tower was shown in London. According to the art historian Barbara Dayer Gallati Shannon was often commissioned to paint different members of the same family.
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