One of the most popular paintings in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art is The Mirror (1910) by Robert Lewis Reid. Reid's connection to upstate New York came at the end of his life, although he was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.He studied at the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston, the Art Students' League in New York, and the Academie Julian in Paris. Reid received several public commissions, from the "White City" in Chicago in 1893 to the Library of Congress.
While The Mirror is typical of Reid's work for its bold palette, the Japanese screen give the painting more bite than Reid's often sentimental work.
Robert Reid died at a sanitarium in Clifton Springs, NY, after he suffered a delibilitating stroke.
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