Ambrose McEvoy (1877-1927): A ‘painter of excellence’ shaped by artistic influences

This thesis explores the life and work of the modern British portraitist Ambrose McEvoy, by focusing on the artistic influences that shaped his work throughout his career. McEvoy was one of the most popular portrait painters of his generation, with his sitters predominantly comprising the glamorous social elite of the 1910s and 1920s, politicians, royalty, and the aristocracy. Yet, despite his impressive oeuvre of famous faces, McEvoy has almost entirely disappeared from art-historical literature. At the peak of his career, he was best known for his ‘ethereal’ portraits of women in beautiful dresses, a subject which in the years following his death in 1927 became regarded as superficial. However, early research for this thesis led to the discovery of the artist’s estate, a large and unique collection of archival and painted material comprising 5000 items. The papers were uncatalogued and unpublished, and had remained in the possession of McEvoy’s family since his death. This material, which I have titled the McEvoy Estate Papers, provides an entirely original view of McEvoy and his work, which stands in stark contrast to the superficiality that haunts his posthumous reputation. The McEvoy Estate Papers has provided a vital foundation for this thesis and has led me to explore an overarching and important theme in the artist’s career, the subject of influence. McEvoy was deeply influenced by a number of different artists throughout his career, from the Dutch Golden Age to his modern contemporaries including James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, and Gwen John. This thesis will explore McEvoy’s work chronologically across five chapters, from an early period in which he directly copied the work of old masters, to his later interiors and portraits which gleaned compositional tropes and techniques from other artists’ works. By using the influence of other artists, McEvoy was able successfully to cultivate a unique identity as a portraitist working across a transitional period of modern British art; he reintroduces the concept of the ‘New Woman’ to an upper-class audience in the 1920s, and as leading artist of the period, fulfils his wish ‘to be a painter of excellence’.