Florence Stevenson

Detail and accuracy characterize the work of Florence Ezzell Stevenson, which were usually either floral compositions or drawings of decorative arts objects.

Stevenson was born in Russellville, Alabama, in the northeastern part of the state. She attended Athens Female College, initially an academy founded by Methodists, in Athens, Alabama (now Athens State University). She continued her studies at the Tuscaloosa (Alabama) Conservatory of Art and Music and graduated in 1911. Immediately she was hired by her alma mater to teach art and did so for two years. Sometime after her marriage in 1913 Stevenson moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago with Karl Buehr, a German-born artist who painted impressionistically. While a student there she won the Logan Medal of the Arts, an award established to recognize conventional art at a time when modernism was on the rise. Much later, in 1938, the prize was given to Rudolph Ingerle, another Chicago-based painter.

In 1933/1934 Stevenson's painting titled Madonna and Child was on view in the Century of Progress International Exposition, also known as Chicago's World's Fair, which was intended to showcase technological innovation and offer hope during the Depression. While that was a forward-looking initiative, in the mid-1930s she participated in the Index of American Design whose purpose was to document crafts and decorative arts from the colonial period to 1900. It was one of the several programs of the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration. One of about four hundred artists, Stevenson drew meticulous representations in watercolor, pen, and ink of such things as textile and jewelry designs, plates and pitchers, a grandfather clock and even a foot warmer. Twenty-eight examples by her are in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Stevenson produced cover designs for several publications, including Literary Digest, La Revue Moderne, and the Christian Science Monitor. She exhibited regularly with the All-Illinois Society of Fine Arts, and on one occasion was mentioned by a reviewer for the Chicago Tribune: "Mrs. Stevenson's painting is an oil but its [technique] gives it such clarity of detail that it was mistaken by some of the artists that it was a watercolor." Much of her career was based in and around Chicago, and at the time of her death, she lived by a lake thirty miles outside the city in Munster, Indiana. Even though the majority of her life was spent in the midwest, she was a member of the Southern States Art League and a regular exhibitor in her home state, Alabama. For instance, in a 1942 show in Birmingham an oil painting of flowers was cited in the press as by "the distinguished Chicago artist." Her paintings were often presented in hand-carved and gold leaf frames resembling those of the arts and crafts style.