Earnest Lee Major (1864-1950)

Ernest Lee Major was a prominent member of the Boston school of painting (along with many other such as Frank W. Benson, Edmund C. Tarbell, Joseph DeCamp, and William M. Paxton) and was one of the last painters of that era to adopt and promote the 19th century approach to his painting, teaching, and life. In his seminal study of Boston school artists, Ives Gammell wrote of him "For many years a familiar figure in what might appropriately have been dubbed Boston's Latin quarter, swathed in his coat and invariably accompanied by an oversized dog, Major incarnated the accepted image of the nineteenth-century artist right up to his death." His approach to teaching painting (an occupation which occupied much of his later life) involved encouraging his students to study the works of the great masters and to seek to emulate or improve on the best of what they had done, certainly an approach worlds apart from the way most artists have been trained since that time.

Major had rather eclectic tastes. He especially liked Titian, Rembrandt, Degas, Manet, George Bellows, and Thomas Eakins, but not the artists of the Hudson River school. Major was almost an exact contemporary of some of his contemporary idols, Frank Benson (1862-1951) and Edmund Tarbell (1862-1938), though he never became quite as prominent as they did. Among his students however he was highly revered despite his famously gruff manner and biting wit. After his death a former pupil commented that "He never did anything for anyone else and yet he was never alone. Mr. Major must have offered us something we desparately needed because one or two people were always in his studio to visit him and bring him gifts, and he had pupils until the very end."

Major loved dogs and became something of a personal trademark. He took them with him everywhere he went including his classes (some were even included in the class rolls) and to exhibitions where the rules against animals were relaxed to prevent him from leaving.

As one of his students put it after his death "I knew him only as the man he painted himself to be. His life was his masterpiece, his own creation."

Ernest Lee Major (1864-1950)

A Young Woman From Ancient Rome (85K)

The Shower of Gold: Dannae (82K)

Herodias and Her Daughter (1919) (81K)

Sanctuary (117K)

Elmer Greene (109K)

Psyche (51K) (The quality of this scan is less than perfect, but it's too nice in real life to leave out.)

Circe (98K) (The quality of this scan is less than perfect, but it's too nice in real life to leave out.)

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