Mrs. T. in Cream Silk, No.2

Yes, that is her wedding gown. The realist painter George Bellows met Mrs. Mary Brown Tyler at the Chicago Arts Club and asked her to pose for him. After first sitting in a burgundy-colored dress from her youth, she dressed in the gown she had worn at her wedding nearly sixty years earlier. Bellows captured not only the textures and details of the dress, but also Mrs. Tyler’s spirited personality. Members of her high society family found the portrait so undignified they insisted Bellows not identify her by name in its title.