Lady with Parasol
Oil on canvas
25 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches
Circa 1915
As published in:
Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection
Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection
As exhibited in:
Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection, 2018–2021, Georgia Museum of Art, Athens; Mississippi Musuem 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
Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection, 2015–2018, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, Tennessee; Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia; McKissick Museum of Art at the University of South Carolina, Columbia; Telfair Museums, Savannah, Georgia; Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee; Rosalind Sallenger Richardson Center for the Arts at Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina
The daughter of a prosperous coal baron, Catherine Wiley enrolled at the University of Tennessee in 1895, just four years after women became eligible for admission. After two years studying in New York at the Art Students League, she returned to her alma mater to teach art in the home economics department.
Like many women artists working in the Impressionist style, Wiley often chose women to be her sitters. The most captivating aspects of Lady with Parasol are the sunlight and bold impasto. As an extension of her teaching responsibilities Wiley published lectures which reflect her own artistic preferences: “The exhibitions of today are as though flooded with atmosphere—landscapes of vibrating sunlight; . . . [paintings] in which the light of day has crept in, silvering the tops of trees, lighting women's gowns, touching and revivifying all.”
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