![Cecilia Beaux - Alexander Harrison [1888]](http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1462/26091217600_69116fa8dd_o.jpg)
Cecilia Beaux (Philadelphia, May 1, 1855 – Gloucester, Massachusetts, September 7, 1942) was an American society portraitist, in the manner of John Singer Sargent. She was a near-contemporary of American artist Mary Cassatt and also received her training in Philadelphia and France. Her sympathetic renderings of the American ruling class made her one of the most successful portrait painters of her era.
During her long productive life as an artist, she maintained her personal aesthetic and high standards against all distractions and countervailing forces. She constantly struggled for perfection, "A perfect technique in anything," she stated in an interview, "means that there has been no break in continuity between the conception and the act of performance." She summed up her driving work ethic, "I can say this: When I attempt anything, I have a passionate determination to overcome every obstacle…And I do my own work with a refusal to accept defeat that might almost be called painful.”
[Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond - Oil on canvas]