Daughter in a Rocker

This painting belongs to the final period of H. Lyman Saÿen's short career, completed in Philadelphia in the last year or so of his life. Saÿen was a Philadelphia-born inventor and painter who held patents for a self-regulating X-ray tube and other devices before dedicating himself to art. In 1906 he traveled to Paris, where he enrolled in Henri Matisse's class and became a regular at Gertrude Stein's Saturday salon — he is mentioned by name three times in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. World War I forced his return to Philadelphia in 1914. Back home, he and fellow Philadelphia modernist Morton Schamberg organized the city's first exhibition of modern art at the McClees Gallery in 1916, introducing Philadelphians to works by Matisse, Picasso, Duchamp, and Man Ray. Saÿen died of influenza in 1918 at the age of 43, the same year this work was completed. The painting was given to the Smithsonian under the unusually patriotic credit line 'Gift of H. Lyman Sayen to his nation.'