Category: Female artists

Mary Elizabeth Price

Mary Elizabeth Price

Mary Elizabeth Price, sometimes simply known as M. Elizabeth Price, was born on March 1st 1877 near the town of Martinsburg, West Virginia. Her parents, Reuben Moore Price and Caroline Cooper Paxson Price were Quakers, who lived in Shenandoah, Virginia. She was one of five children, having a sister, Alice Price, and three brothers, Frederick Newlin Price, Rueben Moore Price and Carroll Price. During her early days she lived in Virginnia but the family moved to the Shenandoah Valley and later to New Hope, Pennsylvania where she grew up.

Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, Philadelphia. 

Art classrooms at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, (c. 1891)

According to the Friends Intelligencer and Journal, Elizabeth graduated from her Literary Course at the Friends’ Central School in 1896, aged nineteen, and she enrolled at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, a museum and teaching institution which later split into the Philadelphia Museum of Art and University of the Arts.

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts building

In 1904, having completed her course, she enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and studied under Hugh Breckenridge an artist and educator who advocated the artistic movements from impressionism to modernism. Another of her tutors was Daniel Garber, an American Impressionist landscape painter and member of the art colony at New Hope, Pennsylvania. Elizabeth also took private art lessons from William Langson Lathrop, an American Impressionist landscape painter and who founded the art colony in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where he was an influential founder of Pennsylvania Impressionism.

Picking Flowers by M Elizabeth Price (1916)

In 1917 Elizabeth moved to New York and took part in the “Baby Art School,” which was a pioneering programme funded by Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney (Gertrude Vanderbilt) and previously known as the Neighbourhood Art School of the Greenwich House. Children from nearby public schools were taught the fine arts of drawing, painting, sculpting, pottery, and wood carving. This idea was so successful that Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh asked Elizabeth to stage an exhibition of the children’s work in the winter of 1919-1920, in conjunction with an art education campaign for teachers and supervisors in art.

Delphinium Pattern by M Elizabeth Price (1933)

When looking at Elizabeth Price’s work, her floral painting are the ones that are best remembered. She often painted on wooden panels coated with a mixture of gesso and red clay. Then, gold or silver leaf was applied over that, followed by the painted image in oils. One example of this is her 1933 painting entitled Delphinium Pattern.

Summer Bouquet by M Elizabeth Price (c.1933)

Another such work was Summer Bouquet which she completed around 1933.

Elizabeth Price joined a group of female artists known as the Philadelphia Ten. This group exhibited together between 1917 and 1945, at first annually in Philadelphia and later, with traveling exhibitions at major museums and galleries on the east coast and in the Midwest. All the members had studied art in the schools of Philadelphia, most having been graduate students at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art and Design). The aim of the group was to move beyond the perception that they were merely hobbyists, as they were commonly viewed in the early 20th century, and be accepted as professional artists. Price regularly exhibited with the group from 1921 until their last exhibition in 1945.

Pumpkinseed Cottage on the bank of the Delaware Canal

Elizabeth, having been brought up on a farmstead in a rural area around Martinsburg, West Virginnia, had always hoped to one day leave the hustle and bustle of New York city life and return to the quieter countryside. Around 1927 she had finished her teaching contract in New York and decided it was time to make that move. She had fallen in love with Bucks County and the area around the town of New Hope and took up residence in an old stone house on the banks of the Delaware Canal. Her house was known as Pumpkinseed Cottage due to its bold yellow colour and diminutive size. She spent much of her time in her home with its studio. She also had a garden where she grew irises, mallows, peonies, lilies, delphiniums, poppies, hollyhocks, and gladioliflowers which often provided her the focus of her many floral paintings. She loved living here and said of it:

“…When I first saw the original cottage it was painted such a vivid yellow that I instinctively thought of a pumpkin; and it was so small that I named it Pumpkin Seed more in derision than anything else. But the quaintness of the name grew on us so that we’ve learned to love it…”

Christmas Card by M. Elizabeth Price. Inside Reads: Christmas Greetings! Card of her studio in the “Pumpkinseed” she and her brother, Fredric Newlin Price, occupied on the Canal Bank – near Rabbit Run Bridge, New Hope, Pennsylvania

She remained living here for the rest of her life with her brother, Fredric Newlin Price, who owned a house, farm, and property in the New Hope area. Whilst living here, she took the opportunity to give talks on art to the New Hope Women’s Club, where she often exhibited her works of art and at the same time encouraged and inspired local artists.

Cheerful Barge 269 by M Elizabeth Price

Although Elizabeth may be best remembered for her floral art works she painted many other genres. One such painting was entitled Cheerful Barge 269, which depicts a bright orange barge sliding by the canal waters on a sunny day. In the painting we see the blue water of the canal seemingly covered by fallen leaves from the trees along the canal banks but in fact what we see on the water is the reflection of the leaves which remain on the overhanging trees. In the foreground we can see sets of stones, alongside a wooden building, which create a path along the canal bank. Strangely, at the bottom right of the painting, we see a single tall red flower, and wonder what made the artist depict such a solitary item.

Bucks County Landscape by M Elizabeth Price

A Country Lane by M Elizabeth Price

Many of her paintings were inspired by what she saw during her walks in the surrounding countryside.

57th Street Window by M Elizabeth Price

Back when she was living and teaching in New York she produced her urban landscape work entitled 57th Street Window.

Bathing in Yardley, Pennsylvania by M Elizabeth Price

Pennsylvania Impressionism, which the artwork of Elizabeth Price emulated, was an American Impressionist movement of the first half of the 20th century. It was characterised by an interest in the quality of colour, light, and the time of day. It was centred in and around Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and particularly the town of New Hope. The movement is sometimes referred to as the “New Hope School” or the “Pennsylvania School” of landscape painting. It all began when landscape artist, William Langson Lathrop moved to New Hope in 1898 and founded a summer art school. The mill town, New Hope, was located along the Delaware River, about forty miles from Philadelphia and seventy miles from Manhattan. It was a landscape artist’s paradise with its spectacular rolling hills, the picturesque river, its tributaries, and the Delaware Canal. An example of this is her painting, Bathing in Yardley, which is a riverside town about 10 miles southeast of New Hope.

Frederick Price, M. Elizabeth Price, Rae Bredin and Alice Price Bredin aboard ship.

M. Elizabeth Price was an untiring promoter of the arts and shared her passion with her talented siblings. One brother, Frederic Newlin Price, owned the successful Ferargil Art Gallery in New York City; another brother, R. Moore Price, was an art dealer and an accomplished frame maker, while his wife, Elizabeth Freedley Price, was a painter; and her brother-in-law, Rae Sloan Bredin, was a member of the New Hope Group. M. Elizabeth Price distinguished herself for her development of women’s and children’s involvement in the arts.

Mary Elizabeth Price died in Trenton, New Jersey on February 19th, 1965 at Mercer Hospital. At the time of her death, she was a member of the Solebury Friends Meeting and, at the age of 87, had been the last living of the Price children. She was survived by her nieces and nephews. Elizabeth Price was buried in the Solebury Friends Meeting House cemetery, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Information for this blog was sourced from

Hellenica World

Art Now and Then

Invaluable

Michener Museum

Maria Elisabeth Georgina “Lizzie” Ansingh

Lizzie Ansingh

My featured artist today is a Dutch lady who became a great portrait painter but may be best remembered for another type of art which I will tell you about later.

Portrait of Lizzie Ansingh by Thérèse Schwartze (1895)

Maria Elisabeth Georgina Ansingh, better known as simply Lizzie Ansingh, was born on March 13th 1875 in the Dutch town of Utrecht. She was the eldest of three daughters of the pharmacist and amateur painter, Edzard Willem Ansingh and Clara Theresia Schwartze.

Johann Georg Schwartze self portrait (1869)

Her maternal grandfather was Johann Georg Schwartze a painter from Northern Netherlands who grew up in America and her aunt who was the portrait painter Thérèse Schwartze, and it was she who gave Lizzie her first drawing lessons. For many years during her childhood, due to her mother’s poor health, Lizzy lived with her aunt Thérèse and it was this aunt who encouraged her to paint and as French impressionism was the rage around that time, Thérèse introduced Lizzy to all sorts of impressionist painters of the time. Both of them also visited many museums and art exhibitions together, which further helped Lizzy gain a perspective on art.

Theresia Ansingh by Thérèse Schwartze

Lizzie’s youngest sister Theresia Ansingh was also a painter but did not take up art, using the non-de-plume Sorella, (meaning “sister”), until she was approaching the age of 50.

Housemates by Thérèse Schwartze (c.1919)

Around 1915, Thérèse Schwartze completed a group portrait of those living together in the Ansingh/Schwartze household. The setting is a room in their house in which a table is the only furniture on show. There are five people around the table. Sitting, with her hands on her lap, is Thérèse Schwartze’s sister the sculptor, Georgine Elisabeth Schwartze. Standing at the back, dressed in black with her hands crossed, is Lizzie Ansingh’s mother, Clara Theresia Ansingh-Schwartze. In the centre, seated at the table with an open book resting on two other books is Anton Gillis Cornelis van Duyl, the journalist and editor-in-chief of the Algemeen Handelsblad, the husband of Thérèse Schwartze. On the right of the group is Lizzie’s sister Thérèse Ansingh and on the far right, standing, leaning against her sister, Maria Elisabeth Georgina (‘Lizzy’) Ansingh.

Kunstenaars or Amsterdamse Joffers: Ritsema, Surie, Osieck, Ansingh, Van den Berg, Van Regteren-Altena en Bodenheim.

In 1894, when Lizzie was nineteen years old she enrolled at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (State Academy of Fine Arts) and studied Fine Art in a separate class for female students and this helped her to further develop her artistic skills. At the Academy, she also learned about human anatomy by studying Greek and Roman statues. Whilst studying at the Academy she and a number of fellow students, Marie van Regteren Altena, Suze Bisschop-Robertson, Coba Ritsema, Ans van den Berg, Jacoba Surie, Nelly Bodenheim, Betsy Westendorp-Osieck and Jo Bauer-Stumpff, formed a group in Amsterdam called Amsterdamse Joffers. This was a group of like-minded young Dutch female painters who would meet up regularly and share their artwork and more importantly support each other on their artistic journey. Many came from wealthy and artistic families and did not depend on painting for their livelihoods. Thérèse Schwartze would often act as a mentor/facilitator at their meetings. It became a major movement in Amsterdam and opened ways for many female painters to pursue art as a full-time profession. Lizzy Ansingh joined many other art associations such as Arti et Amicitiae, kunstvereniging Sint Lucas and Pulchri Studio. Lizzy Ansingh graduated from the art academy in 1897 and by this time Thérèse Schwartze had persuaded Lizzie to make painting a full-time career. This is what she actually did.

The Source of Life by Lizzie Ansingh

As I alluded to at the start of this blog, although Lizzy Ansingh, like her aunt, painted portraits, she will be remembered for being a painter of dolls. Thérèse Schwartze, her aunt encouraged this unusual interest. Lizzy purchased an antique dollhouse from 1740s and would spend hours arranging her dolls looking for inspiration for her paintings and would often buy pieces for furnishing the dollhouse.

Flora by Lizzy Ansingh

Sadly, on the night of April 17th 1943, Lizzy’s Amsterdam studio, along with the doll-house, was severely damaged when a British bomber was shot down, destroying the Carlton Hotel and much of the Reguliersdwarsstraat alongside her studio. The fire which followed was the most devastating in Amsterdam since 1659. Fortunately Lizzie restored the dollhouse and is now part of the Museum Arnhem collection.

Child on a Carp by Lizzie Ansingh

A Doll wearing a Mantilla by Lizzie Ansingh

Lizzie wrote two children’s books, A Little Fruit Basket in 1927 and Aunt Tor has Her Birthday in 1950. She also collaborated with illustrator, Nelly Bodenhein, and published a booklet of illustrations with lines of verse. Her poetry was published in the literary magazine Maatstaf from 1956 to 1957.

Lizzy Ansingh on the occasion of her 80th birthday (13 March 1955) in her Amsterdam studio on Prinsengracht. Photo Ben van Meerendonk / AHF, IISH Collection, Amsterdam

Lizzie Ansingh never married. She died in Amsterdam on December 14th 1959 aged 84.

Information for this blog came from a number of sources including:

Art Now and Then

The Famous People

Arnhem aan Zee – The Doll World of Lizzie Ansing

Louise Emerson Rönnebeck. Part 2.

Arnold and Louise settled down to living in the Colorado town of Denver in 1926. Soon the couple became active in the Denver art community and both were founding members of the Denver Artists Guild in 1928.  Whilst living in Denver during the 1920s and 1930s, they would regularly visit Santa Fe in New Mexico and when in Taos would be guests at Mabel Luhan’s Los Gallos compound.

The Rönnerbeck Family (1937)

The help Louise received from the WPA was just what she needed as her portrait commissions had dwindled due to the Depression and the little savings she had left from a family inheritance was quickly diminishing. Besides her portraiture she had always been interested in painting murals and accordingly she worked long and hard and entered a number of WPA competitions to win mural commissions in various US States. In all, she entered sixteen mural commission competitions for the Treasury Department Section of Painting and Sculpture,  a New Deal art project established on October 16, 1934, and administered by the Procurement Division of the United States Department of the Treasury.

The Fertile Land Remembers, oil on canvas mural by Louise Rönnebeck for the Worland, Wyoming Post Office, now in the Dick Cheney Federal Building, Casper, Wyoming, (1938)

In many of her submissions she focused on the power of women in striving for their goals but also depicted the plight of women and the children who were forced to work at a young age. In the end, she was awarded two commissions. In November 1937 she was invited to submit sketches for a mural that would decorate a wall in the post office of the Wyoming town of Worland. The Worland commission was for $570 and the artist was allowed 119 days for its completion. The organisers wrote Ronnebeck that the mural called for a “simple and vital design” based on a theme appropriate to the locale. Awarding Louise the Wyoming commission was a controversial decision as she was living in Colorado and many believed the commission should have gone to a Wyoming-based artist but the organisers stated bluntly that no Wyoming artist reached the standards they required. Louise commenced her oil on canvas mural entitled The Fertile Land Remembers in 1938. The mural depicts a white American couple with their child sitting in a wagon being pulled by two large oxen. These three figures, all looking towards us, are painted in a variety of rich colours whilst the native Indian horseback riders seen chasing buffalo are portrayed cloud-like figures in the sky above the wagon and are depicted in pale monochromatic luminous grey. None cast their eyes towards us. They are probably Cheyenne or Sioux, the forgotten people of Wyoming, who lived a nomadic lifestyle in order to pursue buffalo herds and were subdued and placed in reservations. Unlike the colourful people in the wagon being the present and future the pale grey figures are symbolic of the past. In the background we see the emerging elements of the white American future. Louise wrote about her thought process that went into the mural design:

“…The work is a romantic recollection of the covered wagon and the wild Indian and bison of the Old West, who still in retrospect hover over the irrigated fields and oil wells of the present. The covered wagon drawn by oxen is shown inexorably pressing through the galloping figures of a vanishing culture, whose form becomes shadowy and disappear into the past under the white man’s determination to open new lands. The landscapes on either side depict the present which was created by these pioneers. The way in which the idea is presented was suggested by the device of the double exposure used in many motion pictures to show the past and the present merging into one dramatic unit…”

Harvest by Louise Rönnebeck (1940)

Louise Rönnebeck’s second commission was for the post office and courthouse in the Colorado town of Grand Junction but which is now housed in the city’s Wayne N. Aspinwall Federal Building United States Courthouse. Louise won the opportunity to paint The Harvest through entering a contest anonymously, for fear of gender prejudice, and submitting a sample sketch. In 1940, with the enlargement of the Wayne N. Aspinall Federal Building, Rönnebeck’s mural was placed to embellish the postmaster’s office door pediment with its conspicuous V-shaped bottom. Her depiction represented the plight of the Native American Ute people who prior to the 1860s had lived in southwest Colorado for centuries and it was here that they had their seasonal hunting grounds. However, despite a Treaty which granted the Utes absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of their land, the lure of rich mineral deposits lured prospectors on to their land. The tribe was squeezed into an ever-smaller parcel of land by the incoming miners. The matter came to a head in 1881 when the Utes refused to leave the territory and were forced to the south-western border of Colorado. The six million acres of land once owned by the Utes was now up for grabs and settlers poured in establishing local industries such as orcharding in the form of growing peaches. In the foreground of Louise Rönnebeck’s large mural we see the harvesting of the peach crop by a young couple, modelled by Louise’s two children. To the left of the painting, we see settlers moving into the Ute’s land with their horses and to the right we see the result of this influx as the Ute people are forced out. This is a painting depicting a thriving local industry and acts as a counterpoint to the hard times of the Great Depression.

Unveiling of “missing” painting.

In a January 18th, 1992, article by Ginger Rice in Grand Junction’s Daily Sentinel, it describes the mural’s mysterious disappearance for more than twenty-five years. Workers removed the oil-on-canvas painting for conservation work, and it subsequently went missing. Fortunately, a General Services Administration building manager, Tim Gasparani, re-discovered the mural and in 1992, The Harvest finally returned to its original home.

The People vs Mary Elizabeth Smith. by Louise Emerson Rönnerbeck (1936)

In 1936, Louise Rönnerbeck completed a dramatic painting entitled The People vs Mary Elizabeth Smith. The depiction was based upon an emotional trial of an eighteen-year-old mother of a eight-month old child, Mary Elizabeth Smith, in January 1936. She, whom the press termed “the girl mother” had been accused of murdering her husband in the previous November. She had accused her estranged husband, nineteen-year-old Robert Dwight Smith, who was unemployed, as being abusive towards her. Just prior to the shooting he had petitioned the court to annul their three-year-old marriage which would result in their child being looked upon as being illegitimate. For Mary Elizabeth, this was too much to bear and so she took her brother’s hunting rifle, marched along to her sister-in-law’s house where her husband was staying and shot him. She told the police that she did not know why she did it. She just knew she had to protect her baby’s name. Her defence lawyers stated that having been deserted by her husband and struggling to bring up their son it had taken its toll on her mental health. Louise Rönnerbeck depicted the theatrical trial scene which she had witnessed.

The defence lawyer mitigated the actions of his client by reminding the jury of her personal history. Her father had deserted her leaving her mother to struggle to provide for her two children. Her own eight-month-old son, Rodney, born after a particular long and painful labour was the centre of her life. The courtroom was filled throughout the trial and the press feasted on the events. In his article, Jack Carberry of the Denver Post wrote:


“…”they met love, and in their ignorance of life, it engulfed them…”

Rönnebeck’s painting depicts the dramatic trial scene. In the witness box, at the centre of the legal proceedings, we see the frail reed-headed defendant, wearing a dark dress with a white collar, handkerchief in hand, as she grasps the side of the witness box. She is barely able to stand and is fully aware that if the all-male jury (at this time women were not allowed to be jury members) convicts her, she faces either the death penalty or life imprisonment. It was reported in the Denver Post that her testimony was one of child-like simplicity. On the left in the front row of the courtroom we see the girl’s mother holding her daughter’s infant son. She had come every day to offer support to her daughter. After Mary’s testimony it was reported that there was not one person in the courtroom who wasn’t crying, moved by the young woman’s simplistic testimony. Also in the scene we see the prosecutor waving the murder weapon and on a table to his right are the deceased bloodied shirt and trousers. The jury retired for five hours before returning and acquitting her for reasons of insanity.

The Children by Louise Emerson Rönnebeck (c.1935)

Following the end of World War II, Louise lectured at the University of Denver from 1945 to 1951 as well as providing some magazine illustrations. Her husband Arnold died of cancer on November 14th 1947, aged 62 and with her two children marrying, Arnold in 1950 and Ursula in 1953, she was left on her own. In 1954 she went to live in Bermuda where she and her family had spent many holidays. Here she taught art at the Bermuda High School for Girls between 1955 and 1959 and continued to paint. In the Autumn of 1973 she returned to Denver where she spent the rest of her life.

Louise Emerson Rönnebeck died in Denver on February 17th 1980, aged 78.

I collected information regarding the life and art of Louise Emerson Rönnerbeck from various sources. The main ones were:

Louise Emerson Ronnebeck

JStor: Louise Emerson Rönnebeck: A New Deal Artist of the American West
Betsy Fahlman. Woman’s Art Journal Vol. 22, No. 2 (Autumn, 2001 – Winter, 2002), pp. 12-18 (8 pages)

Living New Deal

Post Office Fans

Louise Emerson Rönnebeck. Part 1.

Louise at work (c.1930)

My featured artist today is Louise Emerson Rönnebeck, the twentieth century painter famous for her murals. Louise Emerson was born on August 25th 1901 in the Philadelphia suburb of Germantown but spent her childhood in New York. She was the third child of Mary Crawford Suplee and Harrington Emerson and had two elder sisters, Isabel Mary and Margaret Eleanor. Her father was the son of Edwin Emerson, a Professor of Political science and was an American efficiency engineer and business theorist, who founded the management consultancy firm, the Emerson Institute, in New York City in 1900.

Car Accident at Aylard’s Corner (Denver) by Louise Emerson Rönnebeck ( 1937)

Having completed her regular schooling she attended Barnard College, Columbia University, which was then a private women’s liberal arts college in the New York City borough of Manhattan. In 1922 Louise Emerson graduated from Barnard College and, for the next three years, went on to study at the Art Students League of New York where she studied life drawing and anatomy with Canadian American painter, George Bridgman, sculpture with Leo Lentelli, the Italian sculptor and painting with Kenneth Hayes Miller. The latter had the greatest influence on her art and future career. Miller who taught at the Art Students League from 1911 until 1951 had among his students Edward Hopper and George Bellows.

Building Boom by Louise Emerson Rönnebeck (1937)

During the summers of 1923 and 1924 Louise travelled to France and studied fresco painting at the Fontainebleau Schools which had been established in 1921. It was situated in Fontainebleau, thirty-five miles south-east of the centre of the French capital and consisted of two schools: The American Conservatory, and the School of Fine Arts. Here she studied under Paul-Albert Baudouin, a painter of genre, landscapes and decorative panels.

Taos Indian Child by Louise Emerson Rönnebeck (1925)

In the Summer of 1925, Louise did not carry on with her tradition of going to Paris to study at the American Conservatory and School of Fine Arts as she and her sister Isabel had been invited to stay at Taos in the New Mexico ranch home, Los Gallos, belonging to Mable Dodge Luhan. The ranch was located near the eastern edge of the town center of Taos. Luhan, the heiress of Charles Ganson, a wealthy banker, was an American patron of the arts, who was particularly associated with the Taos art colony. The ranch was a meeting place for many contemporary artists and writers and Louise Emerson distinctly remembered her visit there:

“…It was a marvellous place, all wild, strange, empty and romantic…”

Mabel Dodge Luhan Ranch House

Other guests at the ranch at the time were the writers D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda along with Aldous Huxley. Louise was a great admirer of Lawrence and so she and her sister decided to call on him, albeit they had not been invited by the writer. Louise remembers that visit well. Despite not having been invited, it was perfectly all right. He seemed only too happy to have someone who would listen to him. She remembered that he had a red beard and deep-set eyes which conveyed a surprising intensity. She said she was impressed with this wiry, frail, yet madly gifted person, who talked in a common, ugly voice. He and his wife Frieda seemed very Bohemian and avant-garde. Lawrence fought with his wife and they shouted at each other. Despite looking very ill, he baked his visitors bread, and Frieda made jam. Sensing she had been in the presence of a genius, it remained, as Louise recalled, that it had been one of the most memorable days of my life.

Roberta by Louise Emerson Rönnebeck (1928)

Another of the guests staying at the Taos ranch was Arnold Rönnebeck. He was a German-born American modernist artist and sculptor who had arrived in America two years earlier. He was a good friend of many of the avant-garde writers and artists he had met during his time in Berlin and Paris. In America he had become friends with artist Georgia O’Keefe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz and it was at one of the latter’s gallery, An American Place that Rönnebeck first exhibited some of his artwork in America. The gallery was on the seventeenth floor of a newly constructed skyscraper on Madison Avenue. Arnold was impressed by Louise and wrote about her to his New York friend Stieglitz about his first impressions of this young woman:

“…What a summer!  …. The one other person who is doing something about this country is a young girl from New York, Louise Emerson, a pupil of Kenneth Hayes Miller at the league. Still under the influence of Derain, but strong and powerful and with a very personal vision. She lives in one of Mabel’s cottages and is going very good watercolors and oil landscapes…”

Louise and Arnold Rönnebeck’s Wedding Photograph

Soon the friendship between Louise and Rönnebeck turned into love and in New York City, twenty-five-year-old Louise Emerson and Arnold Rönnebeck married despite him being sixteen years older than her. The marriage took place in March 1926 at the All Angels Episcopal Church on the Upper Westside of Manhattan and the reception after the ceremony took place in Louise’s parent’s home close by. Despite her marriage, Louise continued to use her maiden name professionally until 1931.

Arnold Rönnebeck working on his sculpture “Grief” in Omaha, Nebraska (1926)

The couple took an extended honeymoon travelling to Omaha, Santa Fe, and Los Angeles, places which Rönnebeck had to visit to finalise some painting and sculptural commissions and attend the one-man exhibitions of his work in San Diego and Los Angeles . After the honeymoon the couple settled in Denver where Arnold became director of the Denver Art Museum.

Louise with her son Arnold (1927)

Louise Ronnebeck gave birth to their first child, Arnold Emerson, in 1927 and two years later a second child Anna Maria Ursula was born. The Rönnebeck household with two young children and two working artists was somewhat chaotic and Louise had to balance looking after the family and carrying on with her art. Add to this mix, Louise was just starting her artistic career whereas her husband had passed the high-point of his career and since he arrived in America from Germany he had not reached the level of his European fame. Her struggle to manage all her tasks and family duties was highlighted in a 1946 Denver Post article, in which Louise was described as:

“…a four handed woman – – managing home and children on one side, and teaching and painting on the other…” 

In letters and interviews Louise talked about the struggle to have time to be a mother, wife and artist. In a letter to Edward B Rowan, a friend and arts administrator, teacher, artist, writer, lecturer, critic, and gallerist, dated February 1938, she wrote:

“…Being mother of two strenuous children, and the caretaker of a fairly large house, I have to budget my time carefully…”

“… Between the children’s meal time, the mother rests while the artist works…”

Louise Emerson Rönnebeck

In a February 1930 article in the daily newspaper, Rocky Mountain News, entitled Denverite Out to Prove She Can be Mother and Artist by Margaret Smith, Louise was quoted as saying that she would never encourage her children to become artists as an artist’s life is both unsocial and confining. Although her husband missed the big city lifestyle, Louise was content with her new life in Denver and in a 1934 letter to her former teacher, Kenneth Hayes Miller, she wrote:

“…I have become very attached to life in the west. We rent a charming really spacious house almost in the country for very little money, take frequent weekends in the mountains, and the children are radiant and adorable persons. Arnold, however, misses bitterly the stimulation of a big city and longs very much for a change…”

Colorado Minescape by Louise Emerson Rönnerbeck (c.1933)

Louise and Arnold had only been living in Denver for three years when the country was hit by the Great Depression and Louise knew that with their finances being in a poor state she and the family needed some help to survive. She turned to the WPA. The WPA was the Works Progress Administration, later known as the Work Projects Administration. This was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers to carry out public works projects. The Federal Art Project was one of the five projects sponsored by the WPA, and the largest of the New Deal art projects. It was not solely created as some cultural activity, but as an assistance measure which would lead to artists and artisans being employed to create murals, easel paintings, sculpture, graphic art, posters, photography, theatre scenic design, and arts and crafts. One of the important things for the artists, besides earning money, was that commissions were essentially free of government pressure to control subject matter, interpretation, or style.

……….to be continued.

I collected information regarding the life and art of Louise Emerson Rönnerbeck from various sources. The main ones were:

Louise Emerson Ronnebeck

JStor: Louise Emerson Rönnebeck: A New Deal Artist of the American West
Betsy Fahlman. Woman’s Art Journal Vol. 22, No. 2 (Autumn, 2001 – Winter, 2002), pp. 12-18 (8 pages)

Living New Deal

Post Office Fans

Gertrude Horsford Fiske

Gertrude Horsford Fiske

The artist I am looking at today is the nineteenth century American painter Gertrude Horsford Fiske who was famous for painting people, still life, and landscapes. Gertrude Fiske was born into an established New England family that can trace their family history way back to the Governor of Plymouth Colony, William Bradford an English Puritan Separatist originally from the West Riding of Yorkshire in Northern England who moved to Leiden in Holland in order to escape persecution from King James I of England, and then emigrated to the Plymouth Colony on the Mayflower in 1620. Gertrude, born in 1879, was one of six children born into a wealthy Boston family, her father being an eminent lawyer. She was educated in Boston’s best schools but during her teenage years she showed little interest in art as much of her free time was taken up with horse riding and golf. She proved herself to be an extremely skilled professional golfer.

Woman in White by Gertrude Fiske

It was not until she was twenty-five years old that she took an interest in art and began to look at the possibility that her future could be as a professional artist. In 1904 she enrolled on a seven-year course at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, (now the art school of Tufts University), where her tutors included Edmund C. Tarbell, an American Impressionist painter, Frank Weston Benson, known for his Realistic portraits, American Impressionist paintings, watercolours and etchings and Philip Leslie Hale, an American Impressionist artist, writer and teacher.

Charles Herbert Woodbury by John Singer Sargent (1921)


During the summers, she attended Charles Herbert Woodbury’s art classes in Ogunquit, Maine. Ogunquit was originally populated by The Abenaki indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States and in their language the name of the town means “beautiful place by the sea”. In the early years of the twentieth century, it had become a popular destination for artists who wanted to capture the landscape’s natural elegance.

Ogunquit Beach by Gertrude Fiske (1914)

Ogunquit Beach by Gertrude Fiske

Soon, a community of artists formed the Ogunquit Summer School of Drawing and Painting which was founded by Charles Woodbury. Woodbury was a great influence on Gertrude Fiske’s informative years and he encouraged her and her fellow students to “paint in verbs, not in nouns.” By this, he meant that his students should enter into the life of the things they painted. He wanted to inspire them to fresh, “active” seeing and expressive creativity and told them that in seascapes they did not draw what they saw of the wave – you draw what it does. The phrase implied that painting is perceptual and that realism is evidence of the felt and the seen and not just of what’s visible.

Bettina by Gertrude Fiske (1925)

Because of the family’s wealth, Fiske had the financial freedom to pursue her painting career and after she completed her time at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1912, she spent time in France, continually sketching as she travelled. Her artistic style was a blend of the light-filled, classical, portrait style she had mastered under Edmund C. Tarbell with the freer, inventive, and colour-rich landscapes she had learnt during her summers spent at the Ogunquit school.

Nude in Interior by Gertrude Fiske (c.1922)

Gertrude Fiske painted a number of works featuring nudes. Her painting entitled Nude in Interior was completed around 1922. The subject of this work, the nude female, is shown posing for the artist, the image of whom we see in the background, reflected in a mirror. Gertrude often used this inclusion as a means to put over to the viewers the importance of the painter.

Bird of Paradise, Sleeping Nude by Gertrude Fiske (c.1916)

Another controversial nude work was her 1916 painting entitled Bird of Paradise, Sleeping Nude which received mixed reviews. It was praised for its honesty but more conservative critics said it was a scandalous depiction. Before us we see a foreshortened figure of a naked woman who appears supremely relaxed and unaware of us, the viewers. It is simply an honest depiction of a real woman.

Zinnias by Gertrude Fiske (c.1920)

Gertrude returned to America but tragedy struck her family with the deaths of a sister, brother and mother around the time that the First World War was raging in Europe. Fiske then had to care for her aging father. However, despite the tragic losses and her new role as a carer she continued to be a prolific and much-admired painter. She kept a studio in Boston as well as at her family’s longtime home, Stadhaugh, in the town of Weston, fifteen miles west of Boston. It was at Stadhaugh that she worked in her studio which was located on the top floor of a converted barn. It had a picturesque setting overlooking woods and this vista served as the backdrop for several of her works.

By the Pond by Gertrude Fiske (c.1916)

In 1914, she, along with prominent painters of the day, including Edmund Tarbell, William Paxton and Frank Benson, helped create the Guild of Boston Artists. Its mission was to promote both emerging and established artists who lived in the region. The Guild developed a reputation for excellence in quality and presentation. Later, in 1917, Gertrude was part of setting up the Boston Society of Etchers and in 1918 Fiske became a member of the National Association of Women Artists.

Strollers by Gertrude Fiske (c.1926)

After the end of the First World War, America staged a rapidly growing industrial way of life and along with waves of immigration in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, elements of a new national consciousness arose in the United States. It was considered to be part of the colonial revival, which found expression in architecture, decorative arts, paintings, and all types of material life which represented an effort to regain a sense of an earlier time in America. Boston was in the forefront of colonial revivalism, and it was the Boston School of Painting, led by Edmund C. Tarbell, that is closely identified with the movement. Gertrude Fiske, who had spent seven years there as a full-time student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was trained in this artistic dream of the future.

Wells, Maine by Gertrude Fiske


However Fiske was an independently minded and instead of blindly following social convention and the strong direction proposed by the Boston school with its more genteel mannerisms, she ploughed her own furrow and in her landscape depictions instead of removing signs of industry and technology from her work, she made a conscious decision to include them. A good example of this can be seen in her painting entitled Wells, Maine, in which she has retained depictions of a line of utility poles, with a secondary electrical line running across the painting. Her composition with utility poles set against the background of a seascape demonstrates the artist’s interest in juxtaposing signs of modernity with scenes more traditionally considered beautiful.

Portsmouth Burying Ground by Gertrude Fiske (c.1925)

Another example of Fiske’s urban landscape work is one she completed around 1932 entitled Portsmouth Burying Ground which depicts Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s oldest cemetery, known as the Point of Graves, which is situated on the banks of the Piscataqua River in the south end of town. This small historic cemetery dating to the 17th century was the final resting place for many of Portsmouth’s prominent residents. It is the oldest known surviving cemetery in Portsmouth, and one of the oldest in the state, which has about 125 gravestones. Whereas many landscape painters would have spent time amidst the beauty of the countryside Gertrude has chosen this discordant, working waterfront to position her easel to take in the surrounding land. Fiske confounded viewers of this work when she depicted the bright red gasometers and the Sheafe warehouse as a backdrop to the ancient burial ground.

Portrait of William by Gertrude Fiske (1930)

One of her best-known figurative works was one Gertrude completed in 1930 entitled Portrait of William which she exhibited at both the Boston Art Club’s Annual Winter Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting and at the National Academy of Design’s 105th Annual Exhibition. It is part figurative and part an interior depiction which was a popular concept favoured by many of the early Boston School teachers and yet she put her own mark on the composition by her use of colours, such as the juxtaposition of the green of the fabric on the pillows with the dotted Swiss cotton of the woman’s purple dress. She also adopts an unusual placement of figures and objects in the work.

The Carpenter by Gertrude Fiske (1922)

Gertrude Fiske was appointed as the first woman ever to the Massachusetts State Art Commission in January 1930. She was also the the founder of the Concord Art Association. In an article in January 1930’s Boston Globe it was written that she had always had a strong artistic individuality of her own, and there is a note of personal distinction in all of her work—a virile note.

Fiske died in 1961 in Weston, Massachusetts aged 82.

Maria Slavona

Maria Slavona was born Marie Dorette Caroline Schorer on March 14th 1865 in the north German town of Lübeck.  She was the daughter of the pharmacist Theodor Schorer and his wife Ottilie, (née Steger).  Her father owned the Löwenapotheke on the corner of Königstraße, and Johannisstraße in the town, which is now known as Dr.-Julius-Leber-Straße.  She was the youngest of five children and had two brothers and two sisters.  As a child, she was brought up in a happy household in the old patrician house in Johannisstraße. Her parents’ home was a great meeting place for writers, artists and intellectuals. For Maria life at home was a liberal and cultural experience and, at an early age, she soon developed an intense interest in drawing and painting. Her parents encouraged her love of all things artistic and they hopde that one day she would become a painter and her mother and father supported this future road for her. 

Red Gardener’s House with Gardener (Early Spring, Kahlhorst near Lübeck) by Maria Slavona

In 1882, when she was seventeen years of age, Maria went to Berlin to study art.  This was an unorthodox move as accordance with the social conventions of the time, it was unseemly for a young, unmarried woman to leave her parents’ home and pursue an education, in her case. studying painting.  Her move to Berlin caused a scandal in the Hanseatic city of Lübeck.  However, since women in Germany were denied access to art academies, Maria Slavona attended the Eichler private painting school in Berlin and the Deutsches Gewerbe-Museum zu Berlin, (Royal Museum of Decorative Arts) which at the time had a teaching institute.  In 1887, aged twenty-two, she moved to the painting school of the Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen (Association of Women Artists and Friends of Art) in Berlin. It was an informal and free atmosphere, and the women here were allowed to conduct nude studies on living models.  A year later she enrolled at the painting school of the Münchner Künstlerinnenverein (Munich Association of Women Artists).

Self portrait by Maria Slavona (1887)

Her self-portrait, created in Berlin in 1887, shows the face of a 22-year-old, extremely pretty young woman, framed by tangled curls. With her head turned to the left, she fixes her gaze firmly on the viewer. Settling in this Bavarian city was fortuitous as the city of Munich had been, since 1850 onwards, deemed the most important centre for artistic creation and painting.  At this time, her most important patron and mentor was Ludwig Herterich, a German painter and art teacher, who in 1898 was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, where he taught many young artists including Maria Slavona.   He introduced Maria to French Impressionism. A painting style that would be influential for her later paintings.

In the Munich Ladies’ Academy: Käthe Kollwitz seated between Maria Slavona (front right) and Rosa Pfäffinger (lying in front right)

Maria loved her time in Munich and made many friends including a fellow aspiring young painter, Käthe Kollwitz, who was also studying art in Munich. During a return home to Lübeck, she met some Scandinavian artists, one of whom was Vilhelm Petersen and, as they became closer friends, they both decided to take assumed names for their artworks. He chose Willy Gretor and she became Maria Slavona. Along with friends Maria and Vilhelm visited Paris in 1890.  She recalled her arrival in the French capital:

“…In 1890, I came to Paris. This is where a new world opened up to me. The first visits to the Louvre almost numbed and overwhelmed me. But I was disappointed by the schools I saw, I didn’t like them. I decided to work alone and seek advice and judgment only in the circle of a few young like-minded friends, almost all Danes and Norwegians…”

Sommermorgen am Starnberger See by Maria Slavona

That same year, Maria gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, Lilly, but her relationship with the father of the child, Petersen, was over.  She had at first looked upon him as a charismatic and educated man but he turned out to be a dubious art dealer, womanizer and bon vivant.  Worse still when their daughter Lilly was born Petersen had deserted Maria and she was left to bring up her daughter alone.

Alte Blumenfrau by Maria Slavona (1893)

In 1893, at her first exhibition at the Salon de Champ-de-Mars an annual event organized by the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.  Maria Slavona submitted her work, Alte Blumenfrau (Old Flower Woman). At this exhibition, ironically she identified herself under the male pseudonym “Carl-Maria Plavona”.  The painting depicts an old woman standing in frontal view, holding a large basket of white and yellow flowers in front of her body in her worn-out hands. Placed in front of a simple, ochre-coloured wall, the dark, poor clothing of the woman forms a strong contrast to the light background. The wrinkled face, framed by a headscarf, shows emotionless features. The tired eyes look firmly at the viewer.

St Jurgen-Gang in Lubeck by Maria Slavona (1902)

Maria Slavona who, around 1898 had met the Swiss art connoisseur and collector Otto Ackermann. Their friendship grew over the next two years and in 1900 they married. Maria’s daughter Lilly took the name Ackerman and later she became an actress under the name Lilly Ackermann. Otto Ackermann was a valuable asset in the introduction of French art into Germany in the early 20th Century.  Otto and Maria set up home in Paris and it soon became a central meeting place for Parisian bohemianism. Visiting artists such as Münch, Liebermann, Leistikow, along with literary giants and art lovers would often frequent their home and be made most welcome.  Maria, who had spent sixteen years in the French capital, had led a happy and artistically productive life. During this period, she had completed many paintings depicting landscapes, portraits, still life and interiors.

View from Studio Window by Maria Slavona (1899)

One of her favourite subjects was the view from the window of their home.  All of her work over those years established her reputation as a talented painter.

Houses on Montmartre, around 1900 by Maria Slavona

Häuser am Montmartre by Maria Slavona

In 1906 Maria and her family left Paris and returned to her old hometown of Lübeck.  During her stay in Lübeck she completed many paintings depicting the town and the surrounding areas.

 Villa entrance in Lübeck by Maria Slavona

Spring Thaw near Lubeck by Maria Slavona (1913)

Unfortunately, the bourgeois, art-hostile atmosphere that pervaded the old Hanseatic city had a negative effect on her husband’s art trade business and sadly this gave them no alternative but leave Lübeck in 1909, and move to Berlin.  It was in the German city of Berlin that she was once again artistically active and from 1913 she became a member of the Berlin Secession.  This was one of the last art Movements of 19th century German art.  It was a breakaway group of artists, who in 1898 ‘seceded’ from the city’s arts establishment, led by the eminent painter Max Liebermann.  It was a reaction to the Association of Berlin Artists, and the restrictions on contemporary art imposed by Kaiser Wilhelm II.  Sixty-five artists “seceded,” demonstrating against the standards of academic or government-endorsed art.  The group established an independent exhibition society, in order to champion new forms of modern art – rather than continue to churn out the old-fashioned academic art favoured by the art establishment.

Bouquet of field flowers by Maria Slavona (c.1900)

Following the end of the First World War Maria’s health began to deteriorate.  Added to that with a decrease in the sale of her paintings, the financial circumstances of the family took a substantial dip.  To try and rectify both her health and cut back on their financial outgoings the family moved to the countryside village of Munsing in Upper Bavaria.  From that time on, Maria mainly created floral still life works. 

Self portrait by Maria Slavona (1910)

Maria Slavona died in Berlin on May 10th 1931 aged 66.  Unfortunately, a large part of her work was lost during the Second World War, and also, for many years, her remaining works were branded by the Nazi government as Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) in 1933 and it was mainly ignored outside of her hometown Lübeck. Slavona is now known and famous as a representative of German Impressionism. Although she was unable to build on the artistic successes of her Paris years in Berlin, she was one of the best-known painters of her time, along with Dora Hitz and Käthe Kollwitz.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of her death in 1981, the Hanseatic City of Lübeck honoured its once famous and forgotten citizen with a large exhibition in the St. Anne Museum.

Ellen Day Hale

Portrait of Ellen Day Hale by Margaret Lesley Bush-Brown (1944)

The artist I am looking at today is the American painter, Ellen Day Hale.  Ellen Day Hale was born on February 11th, 1855 in Worcester, Massachusetts.  She was born into an elite Boston Brahmin Hale-Beecher family. The Boston Brahmins, sometimes referred to as the Boston elite, are members of Boston’s historic upper class who were associated with a cultivated New England accent, going to Harvard University, Anglicanism, and traditional British-American customs and clothing. They were considered White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).

Edward Everett Hale

Hale’s father was the author and orator Edward Everett Hale, an American historian, and Unitarian minister, who was best known for his writings such as “The Man Without a Country” which was published in Atlantic Monthly in support of the Union during the Civil War. Her father acted as a Unitarian chaplain in the U.S. Senate from 1904 until his death in 1909, and Ellen Hale often assisted her father in his church-related duties. Her mother was Emily Baldwin Perkins. Although the Hale family was looked upon as being part of the Brahmin elite, they were neither wealthy nor were they well respected among the Boston upper class.  Emily Hale was one of nine children.  Her elder brother died during childbirth and she then became the oldest of eight children with seven younger brothers.  She was brought up in an artistic household and her mother encouraged her interest in art, and her father’s sister was watercolourist Susan Hale, and it was thought that Susan gave Ellen her first artistic instruction. Her brother was Philip Leslie Hale who became a celebrated artist and art critic and who married Lilian Westcott Hale, an Impressionist painter.

Plains Indian Girl by Ellen Day Hale

During the 1870s, Ellen Hale decided that she needed to move forward with her art and look for a formal art education.  It was a good time to cement this artistic idea as Boston was in the middle of what was known as the Boston Renaissance and new cultural institutions were coming into being in the city.  A new and large Boston Public Library had been founded in 1848 and the first large free municipal library in the United States, the first public library to lend books, the first to have a branch library, and the first to have a children’s room.  The Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) was founded in 1870 and in 1876, it moved to a highly ornamented brick Gothic Revival building in Copley Square. 

William Morris Hunt by Helen Mary Knowlton (1896)

Starting in 1874, Hale enrolled on a five-year course at William Morris Hunt’s school for painting, where she studied under Helen Mary Knowlton.  Helen Mary Knowlton had received art tuition from William Morris Hunt, and she told him that she knew of forty women who would love to study art and so in 1868, despite criticism from those who thought he was wasting his time, Hunt began classes for women.  It was not art that he was teaching, he was inspiring his female students and instilling in them a sense of self-worth.  When Hunt died in 1879, Knowlton carried on his work of supporting his female students and getting the group of women to rely upon each other for professional and personal support rather than their husbands or other men,

Morning News by Ellen Day Hale (1905)

Having finished her five years at the William Morris Hunt school she moved to Philadelphia and enrolled at a two-year course at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), where the director was Thomas Eakins.  Following this, in 1881, Ellen Day Hale went to Europe with Helen Knowlton and the pair went on to visit Belgium, Holland, Italy and England continually visiting museums of art and taking time to copy some of the paintings.  For a brief time whilst in London, Hale studied at the  Royal Academy, but she eventually parted company with Knowlton and travelled to Paris where she enrolled with Emmanual Frémiet at the Jardin des Plantes, worked in the atelier of Emile Carolus-Duran, and learned the French academic style at Académie Julian before returning to Boston in 1883.

Self portrait by Ellen Day Hale (1885)

It was whilst back in Boston at her family’s home in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and at the family’s summer home in Matunuck, Rhode Island. that Hale began her self-portrait in 1884.  In this work we see Hale gazing out at us with great assurance.  Her right arm rests on the arm of a chair.  She is dressed completely in black wearing a dress with buttons and a fur collar, covered by a loose jacket.  From under the brim of her black hat we can see her fringe.  Hale appears to be making a fashion statement with her clothes and youthful hairstyle.  Her bold gaze and her fashionable outfit suggest her willingness to push traditional boundaries.  Hale exhibited her Self-Portrait in Boston, perhaps for the first time, in 1887.  The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which owns the work later commented:

“…Hale’s forthright presentation, her strong dark colours, and the direct manner in which she engages the viewer recall the work of one of the French painters she most admired, Edouard Manet. Manet had been known for his confrontational images, strongly painted without subtle nuances of light and shadow…”

June by Ellen Day Hale (1893)

Now although back living in Boston, Hale still loved to travel and made frequent journeys to Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.  She also spent time exploring her own country especially the American West.  Despite her railing against traditional limitations exacted on females by society, the one she concurred with was that women should not travel alone and so she needed to find a like-minded companion for her exploratory journeys.  Hale soon lighted on the perfect companion in the guise of the painter Gabrielle de Veaux Clements.  Gabrielle had attended several prestigious art schools, studied under notable artists such as Tony Robert-Fleury and William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1885. Clements specialized in landscapes, cityscapes, and harbour vistas capturing the bustling spirit of Paris, Baltimore, Cape Ann, and other cities and towns throughout France, Algiers, Palestine, and along the American East Coast.

Gabrielle de Veaux Clements.by Ellen Day Hale (1883)

Clements became the traveling partner of Ellen Day Hale whom she met in 1883. The two artists became life-long friends and beside their painting trips spent their summers in Folly Cove on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, which was a popular artist destination and an artist’s colony thrived. It was where the artists staying there were able to share models and learn each other’s techniques.   Such was their close friendship that in 1893, the two artists established a household together in the small Massachusetts town of Folly Cove, at a house they bought, “The Thickets”. During the winter months Clements and Hale spent their time traveling throughout Europe but sometimes just remained in America in Charleston, South Carolina, where they taught etching. Among their circle of friends and visitors were Cecilia Beaux and Margaret Bush-Brown.  Between 1904 and 1909, Hale resided in Washington, DC, serving as hostess in her father’s home while he was chaplain to the U. S. Senate.

Early Vegetables by Ellen Day Hale (c.1918)

The relationship between Ellen Day Hale and Gabrielle de Veaux Clements was often referred to as a Boston Marriage.  A Boston marriage was, historically, the cohabitation of two wealthy women, independent of financial support from a man. The term is said to have been in use in New England in the late 19th and early 20th century. Some of these relationships were romantic in nature and might now be considered a lesbian relationship; others were not.  The nature of Ellen and Gabrielle’s type of relationship is simply unknown.

Musical Interlude by Ellen Day Hale

While in Charleston Ellen and Gabrielle immersed themselves in the flourishing arts renaissance which was taking place in the city.  They were both accomplished printmakers and they helped organize the Charleston Etchers Club, whose founding members included Elizabeth O’Neill Verner, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, and Alfred Hutty. It was Verner’s daughter who later recalled the input of Verner and Hale had in Charleston and she recalled Clement’s words:

“…We want to leave Charleston some of our skills . . . Get together a group so you can buy a press and we will show you how to use it . . . We’ll teach you, so you can teach them…”

The Charleston Etchers’ Club was formed in 1923 and it offered instruction on printmaking, encouraged intellectual exchange, art criticism, and exhibition planning.

The Green Calash by Ellen Day Hale (1904)

In 1904 Ellen Hale completed a painting entitled The Green Calash.  A calash is a large green bonnet or hood and resembles the folding top of an 18th-century carriage known as a calash.  It is a three-quarter-view portrait of a young woman who is sitting on a chair with her hands resting together in her lap.

The Green Calash by Ellen Day Hale (1925)

In 1925, twenty-one years later, Hale completed a soft ground colour etching and aquatint after her 1904 painting. The print is again a three-quarter-view portrait of a young woman seated with her hands resting together in her lap and is once again wearing a large green bonnet. The print of this etching was exhibited at the Smithsonian as part of a print exhibition in November 1936. Gabrielle DeVeaux Clements and Ellen Hale experimented extensively with colour printmaking throughout their careers.

The Original Colour Engraving by René Ligeron

Both had been influenced by the French artist René Ligeron’s 1924 treatise on colour intaglio, which Hale translated into English for the Smithsonian exhibition. Gabrielle Clements wrote to curator R.P. Tolman telling him that she and Hale had “been working on an interesting line of experiments in printing etchings in colour” and that they had “lately gained better control of the medium, and greater simplicity.”

This prestigious 1936 exhibition came near the end of Hale’s and Clements’s careers. By that time, they had been producing prints for more than sixty years. It was almost fifty years earlier that their work was showcased at the Women Etchers of America exhibition in 1887 at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Hale died in Brookline, Massachusetts, on February 11, 1940, her 85th birthday.  Hale’s legacy is not only in her artwork and etchings but also her struggle to gain in the acceptance of female artists. A member of what is now referred to as the Boston School of Painting, Hale has also been recognized as one of America’s leading women impressionists.  She also wrote History of Art (1888). Her artist brother Philip Hale also exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair. 

Ellen Day Hale

In his 1997 memoir, A Sculptor’s Fortunes, by Walker Kirtland Hancock an American sculptor and teacher talked about Hale and Clements, and their roles in establishing Folly Cove as a gathering spot for artists, a place he first visited in 1920:

“…Folly Cove…had begun to attract artists at least two generations before I arrived. The first to settle there were Ellen Day Hale and Gabrielle deV. Clements….Their houses were close to each other, overlooking the cove. Miss Clements’ was a large frame structure not far back from the road. Miss Hale’s, a stone building, was on higher ground. Miss Clements had been a mural painter, but because of her age she at that juncture limited her work to etching. She was kind and patient enough to give me lessons in that art. Miss Hale continued with her portrait painting. Both ladies were very much a part of the local community…They were responsible for [sculptor] Charles Grafly’s buying a house and building a large studio nearby, having recommended “the Folly” to him as a healthful place in which to live…

Marie Laurencin. Part 3.

Marie Laurencin – a photograph by Granger (1913)

Marie Laurencin left Spain and returned to Düsseldorf via Switzerland in 1919. She was very unhappy with her life.  She was depressed and felt unstable with her marriage failing.   Laurençin filed for a divorce from her husband telling friends that the reason for the marital split was because her husband had become an alcoholic. In 1921 Laurençin returned to Paris, knowing that her marriage was finished and she divorced von Wätjen.   However, despite the divorce, they remained on good terms, and Marie kept in touch with van Wätjen’s until his death in 1942.

The Spanish Dancers by Marie Laurencin (1921)

Now having returned to the French capital Marie realised that she had been greatly affected by her separation from Paris which she looked upon as the unrivalled centre of artistic creativity. After her return, she developed a new style of painting which is reflected in her 1921 work, The Spanish Dancers.   Gone are the muted colours and the geometric patterns she had inherited from Cubism and these are replaced by light tones and undulating compositions. Once again, we note the coming together of the feminine world and the animal world, which became her favourite theme.  In the work we see three young women spinning around a small bounding dog, in front of a large grey horse. Marie has portrayed herself kneeling in the foreground wearing a pink tutu, which happens to be the only warm tone in the painting. Her hands are entwined with those of the young woman on the right, who is wearing a light grey dress with a light blue headscarf.  The woman on the left, wearing a light blue dress, is executing a dance step whilst holding a hat in place on her head.  Her eyes lead almost seamlessly into the large almond-shaped eye of the horse. The animals would appear to be the dancers’ confidantes in this strange setting.

Femme aux tulipes by Marie Laurencin (1936)

Now back in Paris, Paul Rosenberg began to act as Marie Laurencin’s dealer which afforded her enhanced financial security and he also provided her with sound business advice.  Unfortunately, she did not always take Rosenberg’s advice and he was horrified to find that Marie often gave her work as a gift to those she liked. She also set higher prices for work which she found dull and often discounted some of her favourite works.  Curiously she often charged men double what she asked of women, and even charged brunettes more than blondes and furthermore she had a reputation for painting only children whom she liked.

Jeunesse by Marie Laurencin (c.1946)

In her private life, while Marie Laurençin had a succession of male lovers, she also had close female friendships and lesbian relationships. She became part of the female expatriate community in Paris that searched for both artistic and sexual liberation. Lesbianism, for many of these women, was a crucial element of their resistance to bourgeois social conventions.

Gertrude Stein at 27 rue de Fleurus with her portrait by Picasso on the wall, May 1930

Now, based in the French capital, Marie was alone.  The first American who befriended her and bought her paintings was Gertrude Stein, an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector who had been born in Pennsylvania.  She had moved to Paris in 1903 and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Matisse, would meet for conversation and inspiration.  Laurençin soon became part of the Stein salon on rue de Fleurus.  Marie remained in contact with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas until Stein’s death in 1946 and continued to see Toklas until her own death.

Portrait of Coco Chanel by Marie Laurencin (1923)

Laurencin held an exhibition of her work in 1921 at the Rosenberg Gallery in Paris. She had now built up her reputation as a talented portraitist, especially of celebrities, one of whom was Coco Chanel.  The commission to paint Chanel’s portrait came about in the autumn of 1923 when Marie Laurencin was working for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes which was established in Paris, Monte-Carlo and London, and Marie was designing the costumes and sets for the ballet Les Biches [The Does]. At the same time, Coco Chanel was creating the costumes for the same company’s Le Train Bleu [The Blue Train] operetta .   At that time, Coco Chanel was both very rich and famous, and she commissioned Marie Laurencin to paint her portrait.  This was one of Laurencin’s early portrait commissions. Laurencin depicted Chanel face-on, seated in a relaxed, somewhat dreamy pose, with her head resting on her right arm. She appears relaxed and her eyes and mouth, neutral and expressionless, suggest that she is daydreaming or preoccupied by her thoughts. Marie Laurencin’s painting style was to incorporate animals in her works and here she depicts a white poodle sitting on the Coco Chanel’s knees. It is unclear where Chanel’s flesh ends and her dress begins; her pale outfit is accented with dark black and blue scarves, while the seat behind her is a textured pink and blue. On the right-hand side of the painting, we can see another dog leaping upwards towards a turtle dove which appears to be descending from the sky towards Coco Chanel, like the dove of the Holy Spirit, and thus Laurencin’s symbolising it as a sort of freedom. The colour palette is of a soft harmony of the colours – green, blue and pink, which is reinforced by the long black line of the scarf draped around the model’s neck.  The finished painting was so like Laurencin’s earlier works but did it capture the likeness of Coco Chanel.  The sitter did not think so and the artist did not deny it, but claimed that physical likeness was unimportant.  Chanel refused to pay for it and Laurencin was so annoyed by Chanel’s attitude that she refused to execute a second portrait and decided to keep the original herself.  Despite Chanel’s rejection of the painting, the success of Laurencin’s approach to portraiture was such that she continued to receive and execute portrait commissions in this style until the 1940s. The painting can now be found at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris.

In 1931, Laurencin was one of the founding members of La Société des femmes artistes modernes, and took part in their annual exhibitions until the outbreak of World War II. During the period from 1932 to 1935, she tutored at the Villa Malakoff, a private art school.  In 1937, which art historians believe was the height of her career, a retrospective of Laurencin’s work was held in conjunction with the Great Exhibition of Independent Art Masters at the Petit Palais, which sought to promote the superiority of the contemporary French artistic school, extended to foreign artists “living or having lived in France for many years”. The year 1937 saw a change in Laurencin’s appearance when she finally acquired glasses, which changed her life considerably as she had been extremely short-sighted since childhood and had had difficulty negotiating staircases since the 1920s.

During World War II, Laurencin remained in Paris painting and working on designs for the ballet, and in 1942 she published Le Carnet des Nuits – a collection of poetry with short memoir pieces in prose.  Although Laurencin will be remembered as an artist and the grace and the elegance of her artworks; she is also the author of a diary, Le Carnet des Nuits, an important witness of her time. It tells of her early years she spent in Bateau-Lavoir.  Her writing is of the same delicate style used for her artworks. 

Head of a Woman by Marie Laurencin (1909)

In later years, Laurencin became withdrawn and increasingly isolated and sadly suffered from periods of depression and other health complaints, albeit, she continued to paint throughout this troubling passage of time. Her main companion was her maid, Suzanne Moreau, who had lived with her since 1925. Whether there was more to the mistress/servant relationship is unclear but it is thought that they were romantically linked.    In 1954, Laurencin made Moreau the beneficiary of her estate. It is thought this came about due to Laurencin’s legal struggle, resolved the following year, with tenants living in the apartment that she owned.

The tomb of Marie Laurencin in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.

Laurencin died of a heart attack on June 8th, 1956, aged 72.  She was buried wearing a white dress in Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, as per her wishes, with Apollinaire’s love letters and a rose in her hand.

The main source of information for the three blogs about Marie Laurencin came from the excellent The Art Story website.

Marie Laurencin Part 2.

Marie Laurencin, Paris (c.1912.)

Marie Laurençin’s paintings dating from around 1910 have a strong flavour of cubism. However, she once again stated that although the experiments of cubism fascinated her, she was adamant that she would never become a cubist painter because she was not capable of it.

Bateau-Lavoir c. 1910

Laurençin spent a lot of time at Picasso’s open studio at the Bateau-Lavoir, (Laundry Boat) building at 13 Rue Ravignan at Place Emile Goudeau in Montmartre in the 18th arrondissement of Paris.  The building was so nicknamed as it was said to resemble the public clothes-washing boats moored on the Seine in the early years of the twentieth century. The ramshakle building was said to strain and groan when it was windy—just like the those laundry boats on the Seine. Here, Laurençin exhibited her work along with a group of artists known as the Bateau-Lavoir, which was the residence and meeting place for a group of outstanding artists and men of literature.  It was here that she met Max Jacob, the French poet, painter, writer, and critic, and André Derain, the French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism.  She was also introduced to Gertrude Stein, the American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector to whom she made her first sale in 1908.

Les jeunes filles (Jeune Femmes, The Young Girls) by Marie Laurençin (1911)

In 1911 Laurençin completed her painting entitled The Young Girls.  Marie Laurencin showed The Young Women at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1911, alongside works by other artists painting in a similar style. The exhibition, which gave rise to the term “cubism”, caused a scandal but was also the breakthrough for Cubist art.  This work depicts four pale-skinned dark-eyed women with dark hair, independent of each other and yet overlapping.  They are all wearing  grey robes and stand against an abstracted pastoral backdrop. The female on the left is a violinist, playing music for the figure beside her, who dances. At the centre of the depiction we see a woman seated facing the dancer, but she turns her head to look back at us.  On the right, another woman appears in motion, carrying a bowl of fruit under her right arm and reaching down with her left hand to stroke the nose of a doe. All the limbs of the women have a fluidity which mirrors the drape of their dresses.   Their bodies are outlined with heavy black lines.  Laurençin has experimented with this depiction and artistic style. 

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Picasso (1907)

The posture of the four women with their flat, mask-like faces seems to have been influenced by her friend, Picasso’s 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.  In a way the work can be considered as a suggestion that the four women represent a fertile sphere of feminine creativity.  The presence of the doe is symbolic of femininity and naturalness that was a common theme in Laurencin’s work.  Critics believe the painting alludes to the of lesbian self-fashioning and as a celebration of an independent female realm.  The painting can be viewed at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

Portrait de jeune femme by Marie Laurencin

In 1913, Marie Laurençin’s mother died and this sad event coincided with her ending her relationship with Apollinaire, but this ending could have something to do with his reputation as a philanderer.   However, she would remain close to Apollinaire until his death, aged 38, in 1918. Her split from Apollinaire freed Laurencin of his Cubist influence, but at the same time, isolating her. On June 24th 1914, in Paris, Marie married Baron Otto van Wätjen, a German Impressionist and Modern painter whom she had first met as fellow students at the Académie Humbert.  

Marie Laurencin, Cecilia de Madrazo and the Dog, Coco by Marie Laurençin (1915)

In the Tate Britain, London, one can see the 1915 work by Laurençin entitled Marie Laurencin and Cecilia de Madrazo and the Dog, Coco.  Cecilia was an art collector friend of Maria.  Laurençin told a fellow artist that the painting was completed in 1915 while she and her husband were exiled in Madrid.  The girl wearing the hat is Cecilia de Madrazo, a young Spaniard, and the other figure is Marie herself wearing a pink dress with her dog poking up between them.  She had bought the dog from an English sailor at Malaga. Marie Laurencin was staying in Madrid with the Madrazos at the time.  Marie has depicted herself with short hair which covers her ears and forehead.  Although her skin is grey it is sharply in contrast with pink cheeks and lips and black eyes which are focused downwards.  Cecilia is fascinated by the dog.  She stares down at it and pushes a finger towards its very long snout. Cecilia’s skin is almost white, with pink lips and cheeks.  She is wearing a grey dress and has a white hat, with a large blue bow, atop her dark hair. The backdrop, almost without detail, is grey and there is a pink curtain at the right edge of the painting; the colour scheme is very limited, with Laurencin utilising only grey, pink, blue and very small amounts of beige. This painting is representative of Laurencin’s work, which has been both appreciated and criticised for its deliberately feminine aesthetic.  Marie’s palette concentrated on  pastel colours. The two figures depicted add a sense of peace and charm and they own the conventional female virtues of loveliness, sophistication and meekness. Laurencin’s unapologetic embrace of visual pleasure and the way she developed an aesthetic that acclaimed female softness, elegance and sweetness was itself a radical position. Laurencin’s painting has depicted such qualities as part of a creative process in which a masculine form is utterly unnecessary, and in a way it is a presentation of a work in which both artist and subject are female.   

The Fan by Marie Laurencin (1919)

In 1919 Laurencin completed her painting entitled The Fan and this, like the previous work, is part of the Tate Britain, London collection.  The painting was purchased by Gustav Kahnweiler, an art dealer, as a gift for his wife, Elly.  He and his wife amassed a modest art collection focused on Cubist paintings, sculptures, and works on paper. After the couple moved to England in the 1930s to escape Nazi persecution, Gustav and Elly loaned and gifted works from their collection to the Tate.  It is believed that the woman in the oval frame is Laurencin herself but the identity of the other woman is unknown.  The fan, which was a symbol of vanity, was one of Laurencin’s favourite accessories. The painting depicts a pink shelf that holds two images of women, one in a rectangular frame and the other in a round frame, against a pink and grey background. The portrait to the left, in the larger, rectangular frame, shows a woman and a dog in greyscale, accentuated by a pale blue ribbon, hat and curtains.  Next to it is an oval frame at the centre of the painting depicting a woman reputed to be Marie Laurencin herself, though it is unclear if this is a portrait or indeed a mirror. The lower right corner of the painting is dominated by the folds of a fan, painted in grey and white, that is cut off at the canvas’s edge.  Laurencin has cleverly depicted the fan in a position that could be seen as being held by someone who is staring at the two frames on the shelf.  The two portraits in the frames on the shelf are positioned such that the figures appear to look out towards us but also towards the person holding the fan.  There is an air of mystery about the depiction and the identities of the figures.  Some believe that the woman in the rectangular frame is Nicole Groult, a dressmaker with whom Laurencin is likely to have had a romantic relationship.

Dona Tadea Arias de Enriquez by Goya (1793)

Once married to Otto van Wätjen, Laurencin automatically lost her French citizenship and so took up German citizenship. She and her husband moved to neutral Spain at the beginning of the First World War in order to avoid France’s anti-German sentiment.  Here, Laurencin became involved with the Dada movement, editing the art and literary magazine 391, a Dada-affiliated arts and literary magazine created by Francis Picabia.  She also spent time looking closely at the work of Francisco Goya, whose dignified, dark-eyed women captivated her.

Simultaneous Windows on the City by Robert Delaunay (1912)

During this period in Spain she became great friends with Sonia Delaunay and Robert Delaunay, who had similarly left France to avoid the War.   Robert was an artist of the School of Paris movement, who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, co-founded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes.

……to be continued.

Marie Laurencin. Part 1.

Marie Laurencin photographed by Man Ray (c.1925)

My blog today features the life and artwork of the nineteenth century French painter, Marie Laurencin.  She played an important role in the bringing out the female and lesbian identity in early-20th century modern art movements which at the time was dominated by men.  Her depictions were mainly of females, including many self-portraits but also many also accompanied by animals.  She prided herself with her choice of subjects famously stating:

“…Why should I paint dead fish, onions and beer glasses?  Girls are much prettier…”

Le Bal élégant, La Danse à la campagne by Marie Laurencin (1913)

From early in life, Laurencin was predominantly interested in worlds in which women moved independently and peacefully, creating self-portraits and scenes featuring animals and women which were striking in their thematic consistency. Her fame came through her association with Cubism and she exhibited her work with the Section d’Or, (“Golden Section”), which was also known as Groupe de Puteaux or Puteaux Group, a collective of painters, sculptors, poets and critics associated with Cubism and Orphism.  Her work was also exhibited in America at the Armory Show, but later in her life she fought against her art being compartmentalised in a specific art movement.  She concentrated on her own aesthetic, favouring escapist imagery in pastel hues, that was at once decorative and radical in its embrace of feminine images.

Tête pensive by Marie Laurencin

Marie Laurencin was born in Paris on October 31st, 1883, and lived in an apartment with her mother, Pauline Mélanie Laurencin, a seamstress. Laurencin was an illegitimate child but did not have the courage to question her mother about her absent father.  However, when she was twenty-one-years-old her mother disclosed that her father was the politician Alfred Toulet. Marie Laurencin’s achievements at school were limited although she w an avid reader and enjoyed sketching.  He failings at school precluded her from becoming a teacher, a profession favoured by her mother.   As a teenager, Marie found life difficult and this was presumably due to her classroom failings.  She became introverted and began to paint self-portraits which she carried on doing for most of her life.  After leaving school she studied the art of porcelain painting at the École de Sèvres with the flower painter Madeleine Lemaire.  In 1903 when she was twenty, she enrolled at the Académie Humbert where she worked on drawing, painting and printmaking. 

Self-portrait by Marie Laurencin (1904)

She completed one of early self-portraits in 1904 whilst studying at Académie Humbert.  Laurencin depicts herself wearing a white painter’s smock and her hair is tucked behind her face.  She stares out at us with calm confidence and yet serious expression and yet she has a piercing questioning stare. The palette Laurençin has used is dominated by browns, whites and pinks and she has cleverly used colour to model her face, with pinks shaping the sides of the nose and the eyelids and browns and greys indicating shadows around her cheeks.  Her lips, at the centre of the canvas, are red and full.  It was this love of self-portraiture throughout her artistic career that indicated her interest in depicting herself as the subject of her work which ties in closely to her concentration on female independence and self-fashioning. Laurencin always depicted herself as both an independent artist and as a modern woman.  The painting is part of the Musée Marie Laurencin, Nagano collection in Japan.

Portrait de jeune femme by Marie Laurencin

It was at the Académie Humbert that she first encountered fellow French students Georges Braque and Francis Picabia who would become famous artists of the twentieth century.  It was through her friendship with Braque that she soon became part of a group that included Picasso.

Natalie Clifford Barney

It was around this time that Marie first encountered Natalie Barney, an American writer born in Dayton, Ohio and after coming to Paris to live, hosted a literary salon at her Rue Jacob home, in Paris that attracted French and international writers.  Although the guests included some of the most prominent male writers of her time, Natalie Barney attempted to showcase female writers and their work.  For her, the events were celebrations inspired by the archaic Greek poet Sappho’s group on the island of Lesbos.  Many of these soirees were neo-Sapphic get-togethers, at which a crowd mainly comprised of lesbian and bisexual women would mingle and discuss links between female desire and creative production.  It was these events that were to influence Laurencin’s creative production which can be seen throughout her artwork.

Aléoutiennes by Marie Laurencin

Laurencin’s first print-making efforts came in 1904 with her illustrations of Pierre Louÿs’s The Songs of Bilitis, a collection of erotica, which basically was a set of lesbian poems celebrating erotic love between women. It was around this time that Marie Laurençin indicated her own preference for women.  In 1907, twenty-four-year-old Laurencin had her work shown at her exhibition debut at the Salon des Indépendants, which was held at the Gallery Clovis Sagot in Montmartre. Many of the Cubists painters had their artwork displayed at this event and they wanted to claim Laurencin as one of their own.  However, she refused to be compartmentalised with any one genre. 

Guillaume Apollinaire,

Whilst attending the exhibition Pablo Picasso introduced her to Guillaume Apollinaire, the French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist and art critic of Polish descent.  Laurençin and Apollinaire had a relationship that lasted for six years, during which Apollinaire wrote often about his lover and would refer to her as “Our Lady of Cubism” which of course led more people to associate her with the Cubism movement.

The Muse Inspires the Poet by Henri Rousseau (1909)

The relationship between the two lovers was a strange one. Both were illegitimate children of a single mother and whether this had something to do with it but they lived apart throughout their relationship. The pair never married, and it is thought that this was to the disapproval of their mothers and also they both believed in the modern lifestyle which reject the bourgeois convention of marriage. The “partnership” was depicted in Henri Rousseau’s 1909 portrait of Laurencin and Apollinaire, in 1909, entitled The Muse Inspires the Poet. The two were great influence on each other and their artistic vision so much so that Apollinaire referred to Laurençin as “a female version of himself” and his literary works inspired her dreamy imagery and the symbolism of her work.

Apollinaire and his Friends by Marie Laurencin (1909)

Laurencin completed an interesting painting in 1909 entitled Apollinaire and his Friends.  The painting depicts a gathering of intellectuals, artists, and bohemians, with their host, Guillaume Apollinaire, the celebrated poet and art critic, in the centre of the painting.  He is surrounded by a group of friends.  Before him sits a dog who is depicted with its head turned in loving admiration of the poet !  On the left of Apollinaire are Gertrude Stein, the novelist and art collector, Fernande Olivier, a French artist and model known primarily for having been the model and first muse of painter Pablo Picasso, and for her written accounts of her relationship with him and an unknown woman with a lavish headdress.  To the right of Apollinaire, behind a vase of flowers, are the poets, Maurice Cremnitz, Marguerite Gillot, and Picasso.  Laurencin is seated on the ground wearing a pale blue dress.  She has turned her body turned toward Apollinaire while she looks out at us.  The colour of her dress and the colour of Apollinaire’s tie are similar and she has probably consciously did this to serve as a pictorially connection between her and him.  Laurencin gave the portrait to Apollinaire as a gift and she sold a smaller version to Gertrude Stein.  Apollinaire had the painting placed above his bed in his apartment on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, and it remained there throughout his life and after his death was preserved by his family. The painting can now be seen in the collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris

Laurencin’s paintings dating from around 1910 have a strong flavour of cubism. However, she once again stated that although the experiments of cubism fascinated her, she was adamant that she would never become a cubist painter because she was not capable of it.

…………to be continued.