The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing

Florence Evelyn Nesbit was born on December 25th, 1884, in Tarentum, Pennsylvania, twenty miles outside Pittsburgh.1 Her father was a lawyer, but after his death in 1892, Nesbit’s mother was unable to support the family alone. Debts accumulated and life became a miserable, transient exercise. But while her family’s fortunes declined, Nesbit gradually inherited another form of riches—captivating beauty. Her delicately-featured face, her lively brown eyes, and her cascading chestnut hair secured for Nesbit a degree of local celebrity. A family friend eventually recommended her to Philadelphia portrait painter John Storm, which led to sittings for other painters and photographers. The bright lights of New York glittered on the horizon.

Once in Manhattan, Nesbit soon found employment posing for Carroll Beckwith, already a renowned portrait painter and respected member of the city’s artistic community. The art historian David Slater writes: “[Beckwith] was sufficiently impressed to note that in the afternoon he had a ‘little Miss Nesbit 16 years with a charming head.’ Throughout December and January she continued to pose for him, and he painted pictures of her that sold unusually quickly.”2 Her infamous rape by Stanford White, the ensuing scandal, and White’s eventual murder by Harry K. Thaw, Nesbit’s unbalanced husband, dismayed Beckwith. It was he who had arranged for Nesbit to find stage work and he felt indirectly responsible for her meeting White backstage at the musical Florodora. During Thaw’s murder trial, Beckwith bemoaned the press’ treatment of Thaw and Nesbit, writing, “‘we . . . know so much more than these editors.’”3 Finally, as late as 1915, Beckwith and his wife, Bertha, attended a musical performance by Nesbit. Witnessing Nesbit clutch the fading ribbons of her celebrity left Beckwith feeling melancholy.

At the trial, prosecutor William Travers Jerome sought to use the existence of this painting to undermine Thaw’s insanity defense. He hoped to establish that Nesbit was not a true innocent whose defiling would cause a rational man to become enraged. Slater writes: “Jerome’s examination began not with questions about Nesbit’s relationship with White, her marriage to Thaw, or even the night of the murder. Instead, he produced two photographs taken when she was a model and asked: ‘In posing for Carroll Beckwith did you appear with your person exposed or in costume?’ Nesbit answered that she was always draped; Jerome, perhaps aware of Beckwith’s Portrait of Evelyn Nesbit, clarified by asking, ‘Are you sure that you did not pose with exposed bosom?’”4 Nesbit again denied the accusation.

Popular memory of the salacious story endured throughout the 20th century. A movie, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, starring Joan Collins as Evelyn Nesbit, was released in 1955, and the scandal pulses throughout E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel, Ragtime.

Additional References

American Realist and Impressionist Paintings, p.48-49.

Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, p.272-73.

Idle Hours, p.4,12,23,29.

Impressionism in America, p.19,26,76, et al.

American Paintings before 1945 in the Wadsworth Atheneum, p.88-89,307.

Presentation Notes

In a 5" hand-carved gilt period frame. Artist and title inscribed in pencil on verso of stretcher, name of previous owner, “George Bellows,” and date also present. Faint ink markings on verso of canvas, possibly a gift inscription. Two period repairs, both small patches, also on canvas verso, not affecting image. Two previous labels affixed to stretcher. Light rubbing to margins. Period varnish. Color remains bright and fresh. A remarkable survival.

1. Michael MacDonald Mooney, Evelyn Nesbit and Stanford White (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1976), 25.

2. David Slater, “The Fount of Inspiration: Minnie Clark, the Art Workers’ Club for Women, and Performances of American Girlhood” in Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 39, No. 4, Winter 2004, 255.

3. Pepi Marchetti Franchi and Bruce Weber, Intimate Revelations: The Art of Carroll Beckwith (1852-1917) (New York: Berry-Hill Galleries, 1999), 71-72.

4. Slater, 257.