8. William Sergeant Kendall The End of the Day, 1900 Oil on canvas 34 x 33 inches

William Sergeant Kendall (1869-1938)
The End of the Day, 1900
Oil on canvas
34 x 33 inches

Signed and dated upper right: copyright Sargeant Kendall 1900

Ex-collections:

The artist
Mrs. Helen Phelps Stokes, c. 1900
(Miss Stokes is the sister of Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes whose double-portrait with his wife by John Singer Sargent hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.)
By family descent, until the present

Exhibitions:

New York, Society of American Artists, "Twenty-second Annual Exhibition," March 24-April 28, 1900
Worcester, Worcester Art Museum, "Summer Exhibition," 1900, (second prize)
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, "Fall Exhibition," 1900, (bronze medal and $500)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, "Seventieth Annual Exhibition," January 14-February 23, 1901, no. 305
Buffalo, "Pan-American Exposition," May 1-November 1, 1901, no. 250
Boston, Vose Gallery, "An Exhibition of Paintings by Sergeant Kendall," 1910, no. 1, illustrated

Literature:

American Art Annual 1900-1901, Vol. III, Boston: Noyes, Platt & Company, 1900, p. 168, ill., p. 200. Color lithograph: Copley Prints, copyright 1900, Curtis & Cameron.
New-York Historical Society, William Sergeant Kendall Scrapbook. New York: New-York Historical Society, n.d., pp. 16-19.

William Sergeant Kendall was born in New York in 1869 and trained at the Art Students League and with Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Like most painters of his generation, he went to Paris and studied at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts, an academic training that never left him despite his later fascination with the luminous effects of Impressionism. His subjects relate stylistically to the Boston school. His subjects were most notably mothers and children as well as female nudes. He taught at the Art Students League, Cooper Union, and later, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Carnegie Institute. He was the dean of the School of Fine Arts at Yale from 1913 through 1922.

The End of the Day is one of Kendall's most famous canvases. The models were his wife and daughter, and the picture was acquired by his friend Helen Phelps Stokes, in whose family it has remained until now. When it was exhibited in 1900, it won several important prizes, and its critical reviews were especially laudatory. A New York newspaper critic exclaimed: "Kendall's painting is the gem of the exhibition. It is absolutely true, expresses the sentiment of maternal love with the keenest force and refinement, and is painted simply, authoritatively and flawlessly. It is a long cry from his earlier manner to this unaffected strength and naive dignity. The expression of weariness in the child's face as she looks at the open book, the pose of the bare legs and the natural lovely feeling in the way the young mother presses her lips on the blonde head, resting against her bosom are nothing less than perfect."*

* New-York Historical Society, William Sergeant Kendall Scrapbook, (New-York Historical Society, n.d.), p. 16, newspaper clipping.

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