Samoan Lady Eating Her Dinner by Dorr Bothwell

Samoan Lady Eating Her Dinner by Dorr Bothwell

Samoan Lady Eating Her Dinner

Dorr Bothwell

Please call us at 707-546-7352 or email artannex@aol.com to purchase this item.
Title

Samoan Lady Eating Her Dinner

 
Artist

Dorr Bothwell

  1902 - 2000 (biography)
Year
1928  
Technique
graphite drawing 
Image Size
7 11/16 x 7 1/4" image size 
Signature
pencil signed, upper left hand corner of image 
Edition Size
1 of 1 unique 
Annotations
dated after signature; exhibition label on verso with date, title, medium 
Reference
 
Paper
cream wove 
State
 
Publisher
 
Inventory ID
ABMM260 
Price
$900.00 
Description

In the early 1920s Dorr Bothwell took courses in sculpture from Ralph Stackpole in San Francisco, who was greatly influenced by the work of Mexican painter Diego Rivera. The style of the Mexican Modernist sculptors, painters, and muralists influenced many of the leading modern artists of California, and this is likely where Bothwell's stylized imagery came from.

In her first images of the island of Samoa - where she landed in summer of 1928 - Bothwell's figures could be mistaken for the preliminary mural sketches of Mexican artists: voluminous, rounded shapes with minimal detail, keeping the visual information relegated to a brief and intimate moment. In this image a Samoan woman with her hair pulled back in a shell comb, a spread of root vegetables and fish or pork baked in banana leaves.

Bothwell mounted many of her works from this period on a 4-ply Crescent Illustration Board in order to preserve and exhibit them.

Dorris Hodgson Bothwell, known as Dorr, was born in San Francisco in 1902. Her family moved to San Diego in 1911 and Bothwell began her art studies five years later with Anna Valentien. She returned to San Francisco in 1921 and enrolled in the California School of Fine Arts where she was greatly influenced by Gottardo Piazzoni. Bothwell continued her studies at the University of Oregon, Eugene and then returned to San Francisco where she attended the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design.

Bothwell moved to San Diego and then to Los Angeles where she joined the circle of post-surrealists which included Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundberg. She studied under Feitelson in classes organized by the Public Works of Art Project and she was accepted into the mural division of the WPA and painted murals in Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Francisco.

In 1968, Bothwell and Marlys Mayfield co-wrote the book 'Notan: The Dark-Light Principle of Design,' which encompassed the principles developed in her teaching. She received the Abraham Rosenberg Fellowship, the 1979 San Francisco Women in the Arts award, and was twice awarded Pollock-Krasner grants.

 

Please call us at 707-546-7352 or email artannex@aol.com to purchase this item.