Frances Greene Nix
Oil on canvas
49 3/8 x 39 1/2 inches
Circa 1935–1940
As published in:
Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection
As exhibited in:
The League of Extraordinary Artists, 2024, Richardson Family Art Museum, Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina
Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection, 2018–2021, Georgia Museum of Art, Athens; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson; Huntington Museum of Art, West Virginia; Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, Tennessee; Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina; Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina; Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia
Having failed to find a husband by the “advanced” age of twenty-three, Anne Goldthwaite was encouraged by her family to pursue her interest in art. Goldthwaite promptly relocated to New York and later studied in Paris. One of very few women represented in the landmark 1913 Armory show, Goldthwaite was a lifelong advocate of women’s rights, particularly in the art arena: “But that women have a valid place as women artists is both obvious and logical. . . . We want to speak to . . . an audience that asks simply—is it good, not—was it done by a woman.” She often painted portraits of fellow artists such as Frances Greene Nix, who became the director of the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. Goldthwaite captures Nix’s likeness in a domestic interior with a slightly skewed perspective, a limited palette, and vivid fluid brushstrokes, suggesting her adoption of Post-Impressionist painterly strategies.
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