Nouvart Dzeron, a Daughter of Armenia By Ralph Elmer Clarkson (1861 - 1942) 1912 Oil on canvas, The

Nouvart Dzeron, a Daughter of Armenia By Ralph Elmer Clarkson (1861 - 1942) 1912 Oil on canvas, The Art Institute of Chicago. Ralph Clarkson, a prominent Chicago portrait painter, created his best known work, the painting Nouvart Dzeron, in 1912. The painting depicts a full-length portrait of a young woman dressed in traditional Armenian dress. Between 1912 and the 1920s, the title of the painting would change from Nouvart Dzeron to A Daughter of Armenia to eventually a combination of the two titles: Nouvart Dzeron, A Daughter of Armenia. This changing title reveals how socio- political conceptions altered how people read the seemingly simple composition of a model posed against a blank background. This painting acts as a site of exploration for the changing conceptions of whiteness and commodification of ethnicity during a fifteen years span in the beginning of the twentieth century. Between 1912 and 1915, Clarkson used this painting to depict a generic idea of the Orient in order to bolster his own status as a fine artist. With the Armenian genocide of 1915, the painting’s subject moved into the realm of symbolism and ceased to be just a commodity of Clarkson’s to further his career. Instead, the more valuable commodity became Dzeron’s specific ethnicity: Armenian. And finally, in the mid-1920s, the two titles were combined as public opinion turned against the Armenian cause and the painting’s memorializing effect lessened. Source: Amy Lynn Weber, CIRCULATION, EXCHANGE AND RACE IN RALPH CLARKSON’S ‘NOUVART DZERON, A DAUGHTER OF ARMENIA’, 2011, University of Illinois. #painting #Armenian #nouvartdzeron #woman -- source link

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