Julia Foster Ward

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The portrait of Julia Foster Ward was done by Jules-Joseph Lefebvre in 1880. The medium is oil on canvas, it is 93.98 x 68.58 cm (37 x 27 in), it was made in the romanticism era and it is located in the Junior League Great Hall Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts in St Petersburg, Florida. It is part of the French culture, in the 1836-1911 period. In Julia Foster Ward’s portrait, Jules Joseph Lefebvre develops a contrast between nature (flowers), life (Julia F.) and death (the posthumous portrait). The museum purchase was successful thanks to the funds donated by Mary Alice and Doyle McClendon in 2008. Julia was born in 1857. She was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Seeley Ward. Julia Foster Ward died when she was 21 years old. She is painted …show more content…

The crown of morning glories may reference the briefness of her life: the flowers blossom and die within a single day. Morning glories symbolize unrequited love and the philosophy of life. The green background symbolizes the promise of eternity, sustainability, peace and how precious life actually is. Green, white and yellow flowers represent energy and youthfulness. This painting looks like a faded memory of a teenage girl. She’s looking pale, her eyes are looking into the horizon with a lost focus. It looks seedy, just like her life. Her dress is indubitable elegant, it represents her family’s wealth, social status and power and also it represents the romanticism era. If you pay attention closely to the portrait you can observe that her hands are touching each other and that she has no fingernails. Her hair is moving as if the wind was blowing towards her. The flowers in her hair (morning glories) are not the same as those in the background. The flowers in the garden are white and yellow and they fade until there are no additional flowers. Her background has different tones of green, and a few harsh strokes of dark …show more content…

The concept of women’s purity being related to a familial honor has been historically long lasting. Ideological similarity of female virginity and chastity to the social honor of the group, such chastity being secured by the hard work of direct control over women’s mobility. Pearls are one of the typical representations of female purity and virginity. It should be recognized that pearls do not always carry deeper moral implication – many portrait subjects simply wish to exhibit their sense of fashion and abundance. Her flower crown shows how fast life can vanish and the beauty of her life. This is an affectionate photographic reproduction of a two dimensional, public domain work of art. Foster Ward is not engaging with the viewer she is looking in the opposite direction. It might be because of the fact that people thought it was not okay to look older people in the eyes as a form of respect or to show how humble and simple she was. Her parents must’ve seen her as something big and

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