Doris Lee
Doris Emrick Lee | |
---|---|
California School of Fine Arts | |
Known for | Painting, printmaking |
Spouses | |
Awards | Logan Medal of the Arts |
Patron(s) | Works Progress Administration, Michigan State University, Colorado Springs Fine Art Center |
Doris Emrick Lee (February 1, 1905 – June 16, 1983) was an American painter known for her figurative painting and printmaking. She won the
Biography and career
Lee was born in
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/General_store_and_post_office_24943v.jpg/300px-General_store_and_post_office_24943v.jpg)
During the 1930s, she was commissioned to create several murals by the
She taught at Michigan State University and was invited to attend Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center as a guest artist.[2]
During the 1960s, Lee retired from painting and later died in Clearwater, Florida, in 1983.
Thanksgiving
In 1935, Doris Lee's bustling scene of women preparing a Thanksgiving feast became the object of national headlines when it was first exhibited at the Chicago Art Institute and won the prestigious Logan Medal of the Arts.[2] The themes of Thanksgiving, rural customs, and family life, which Lee painted in a deliberately folksy manner, would have had great appeal to a country still in the midst of the national devastation of the Great Depression.[8] Her painting offered a quaint model of domesticity that appealed to those who were tired of the complication of modern life in the 1930s.[2] To a generation exhausted with the trials of economic hard times, the return to a simpler past became more desirable as the search for a new national identity continued.[2] Her work received public and critical acclaim for its earthy qualities and sense of humor. One critic described her paintings as "fresh, with the charm of innocence". Thanksgiving celebrates the joys of family ties. The bustling kitchen is filled with life and love as a group of women prepares the annual feast.[8] Yet Josephine Logan, the donor of the prize, condemned the work's broad, exaggerated style and founded the conservative Society for Sanity in Art movement in response.[8] This controversy only brought Lee fame, and Thanksgiving has been recognized as one of the most popular nostalgic views of this American ritual.
Awards
Lee was awarded the Logan Medal of the Arts at the 46th American Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago.[9]
References
- ISBN 9780300196153.
- ^ a b c d e f g Manhattan., D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc. is an American art gallery located in Midtown. "Doris Lee | D. Wigmore Fine Art". www.dwigmore.com. Archived from the original on April 6, 2018. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Smith, Roberta (April 7, 2008). "Offering a Painter for History's Reconsideration". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 9, 2014. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
- ^ Lowery Stokes Sims, Doris Emrick Lee 1904-1983 #16, The Landscape in Twentieth-Century American Art, Selections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rizzoli, NY 1991, p.57, 56.
- ^ a b Mendelsohn, Meredith (December 30, 2021). "Doris Lee, Unjustly Forgotten, Gets a Belated but Full Blown Tribute". The New York Times. Retrieved January 2, 2022.
- ISBN 9780307788085.
- ^ "Doris Lee | National Museum of Women in the Arts". nmwa.org. Archived from the original on April 5, 2018. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
- ^ a b c "Thanksgiving | The Art Institute of Chicago". www.artic.edu. Archived from the original on April 5, 2018. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
- ^ "Art: Proletarian Gloom". Time. 26 (19). November 4, 1935.
External links
- Lee, Doris - Biography, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
- Oral history interview with Doris Emrick Lee, 1964 Nov. 4, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
- Offering a Painter for History's Reconsideration by Roberta Smith for The New York Times
- Photo of Summerville, GA Post Office mural
- Doris Lee Papers, 1896-1987 Archived September 6, 2018, at the Wayback Machine at National Museum of Women in the Arts