Cecilia Beaux was an American artist known for her deftly painted portraiture. Often compared to the works of John Singer Sargent, some of her best-known paintings include Sita and Sarita (1893) and Man with the Cat (Henry Sturgis Drinker) (1898). “A perfect technique in anything means that there has been no break in continuity between the conception and the act of performance,” she once said. Born on May 1, 1855 in Philadelphia, PA, she began taking private painting lessons as a teenager and traveled to Paris in the 1880s. Here, she studied at the Académie Julian under William-Adolphe Bouguereau and was exposed to the Impressionist works of Édouard Manet. After returning to Philadelphia, Beaux established a reputation as one of the eminent portraits painters in the city and began receiving a number of commissions. She moved to New York around 1900, and had a summer home built in Gloucester, MA around the same time. Over the decades the followed, the artist continued to consolidate her earlier success despite the changing styles of the avant-garde. She died on September 17, 1942 in Gloucester, MA. Today, Beaux’s works are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others.