Art Students League

Artist Doris Lee (American, 1905 - 1983)

Dateca. 1948

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 30 × 45 inches (76.2 × 114.3 cm)
Framed: 31 7/8 × 46 7/8 × 2 inches (80.96 × 119.06 × 5.08 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust through the George H. and Elizabeth O. Davis Fund

Object number2019.5

SignedIn black paint at lower right corner, “Doris Lee”

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

American Art

Terms

DescriptionArt Students League depicts a nude female model posed in an art studio with a painting on an easel to the right of the model some distance across the room. Art Students League is horizontally oriented with a low horizon line where the pink, back wall of the studio meets the chestnut-colored floor. The contents of the scene are mostly simplified, geometric shapes. Perspective is flattened in some parts of the scene, including the blue table on which the model sits, which is positioned in the lower left quadrant of the painting, but just left of the midline. The model sits on a black chair, her lower half facing toward the right with legs crossed, her torso turned toward the viewer. Her face is featureless and her right arm leans against gold drapery that is also in flattened perspective and flows down from the chair and over the edge of the blue table. A black stool stands on the upper right corner of the table. A large, pink four-panel folding screen stands behind the blue table, and a single white globe light hangs from a black line in front of the screen and above the model. A long black curtain hangs along the left edge of the painting, tied back near its bottom edge. Near the top of the righthand edge of the screen, a white and black clock hangs on the back wall. Further into the upper right corner, a black exposed pipe is suspended from the wall and ceiling, hanging over three unidentifiable rectangular shapes. The two smaller rectangles, one yellow and one white, sit on top of a large brown rectangle that is subdivided, suggesting lockers or cubbies. A darker brown parallelogram along the left of this brown rectangle gives it three dimensions and makes the object appear to be standing against the back wall of the studio. The painting on the easel stands in front of this brown rectangle, in the right third of the picture, and casts a small shadow on the ground to its right. The painting-within-the-painting is vertically oriented and is an imprecise, sketchy image of the nearby model and her surroundings.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Visions of New York, D. Wigmore Fine Art, New York, January 5–February 28, 1995, unnumbered.

Gallery Label

Doris Lee

American, 1905–1983

Art Students League, about 1948

Oil on canvas

Doris Lee painted the same nude model twice, with the model sitting near the center of this image as well as on a canvas to the right. Lee invites us to compare the two versions. The differences between the central scene and its appearance on the easel could suggest the challenges faced by a student trying to translate reality onto canvas. Lee herself did not paint directly from observation but instead worked from memory and imagination. The title, Art Students League, refers to a school in New York where Lee’s husband taught.

Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust through the George H. and Elizabeth O. Davis Fund, 2019.5

Provenance

The artist;

To her estate, 1983;

Purchased from the estate through D. Wigmore Fine Art by a private collector, Birmingham, MI, January 1, 1996–February 27, 2019;

Purchased from them through D. Wigmore Fine Art by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 27, 2019.

Published References

Visions of New York, exhibition brochure (New York: D. Wigmore Fine Art, 1995), (repro.).

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