Facing each other at last, the girl white, shaking, her eyes aflame
Date1909
Artist
Gayle Porter Hoskins
(American painter, illustrator, and muralist, 1887–1962)
Illustration CitationCover and frontispiece for The Winning Chance, by Elizabeth Dejeans (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1909)
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions36 x 24 1/2 in. (91.4 x 62.2 cm)
frame: 39 1/4 × 27 3/4 in. (99.7 × 70.5 cm)
frame: 39 1/4 × 27 3/4 in. (99.7 × 70.5 cm)
Credit LineAcquired by exchange, 1971
Object number1971-4
On View
Not on viewClassificationsPAINTING
Label TextElizabeth Dejeans' novel The Winning Chance deals with sexual abuse by a predatory employer. Here a 19-year-old stenographer shrinks from her sinister boss's demand that she succumb to his advances. After enduring months of harassment and threats, she enters into a loveless relationship with him, thereby saving her blind mother and brother from financial ruin but losing her self-respect. After a moral awakening, he later commits suicide and she marries the man she loves. The center of the composition is two fists clenched, hers in fear and his in anger, between the stark white of his shirt and her sleeve. The tiger rug with the animal’s bared fangs is a perfect foil for the brutish man.
Gayle Porter Hoskins
1925
