Languid Repose
Imagine yourself awash in leisure with this delightful H. Siddons Mowbray artwork.Mowbray's paintings encapsulate Gilded Age luxury. He used a brilliantly colored palette to satisfy his wealthy patrons and their fantasies of the exotic East. In Idle Hours, the artist re-creates a harem with its cushions, flowers, and mosaic tile floor. Two women lounging in richly colored robes interrupt their mandolin playing and conversation to gaze at turtles being fed. Mowbray heightens the sense of confinement by enclosing the women in a compressed space.
To see Idle Hours and other jewels from this sophisticated era, visit our traveling exhibition The Gilded Age: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, opening September 9, 2001 at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Source: Richard Murray. The Gilded Age: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).
Pictured: H. Siddons Mowbray, 1858 Egypt–1928 USA, Idle Hours, 1895, oil, 12 x 16 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans.
Imagine yourself awash in leisure with this delightful H. Siddons Mowbray artwork.Mowbray's paintings encapsulate Gilded Age luxury. He used a brilliantly colored palette to satisfy his wealthy patrons and their fantasies of the exotic East. In Idle Hours, the artist re-creates a harem with its cushions, flowers, and mosaic tile floor. Two women lounging in richly colored robes interrupt their mandolin playing and conversation to gaze at turtles being fed. Mowbray heightens the sense of confinement by enclosing the women in a compressed space.