Woman with Poinsettias,
1932
Clara Davidson
(1874-1962)
View Artist Bio
Oil on canvas
33 x 27 inches
Signature Details: Clara Davidson/1932
Status: Available
As both a commercial and fine artist, Clara Davidson is most noted for her feminine figural works. Working as an illustrator for leading magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and Town and Country as well as books for young girls, Davidson created portraits and genre scenes that appealed to a female readership. Her studio works reflected this same bent, whether in portraits, floral still lifes, or romantic landscapes.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Davidson received advanced instruction in this country and abroad. In New York, she studied with Arthur Wesley Dow at the Art Students League and at the Cooper Union Art School. While abroad in Paris, she was tutored by the eminent Art Nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha and by J. Emile Blanche, both of whom strongly influenced her work.
Davidson exhibited at leading venues in the first half of the twentieth century, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Art Club, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Society of Independent Artists, and National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. She was a member of the Silvermine artists’ colony in Norwalk, Connecticut, where she died in 1962.
Davidson was included in the 2001 Boston Museum of Fine Arts exhibition, A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston, 1870-1940. Her work is in the collection of the Brandywine River Museum.
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