biografia di Susan WATKINS (1875-1913)

Birth place: Lake County, CA

Addresses: New York, 1890; Paris, France, 1896-1908; Norfolk, VA, 1913

Profession: Painter

Studied: ASL; Académie Julian, Paris, with Collin, 1896-98

Exhibited: Paris Salon, 1899 (hon. men.), 1901 (gold medal); PAFA Ann., 1902-13; St. Louis Expo., 1904 (silver medal); Mark Hopkins Inst., San Francisco, 1906; Royal Acad., London; AIC; SAA; Corcoran Gal.; NAD, 1910 (Shaw prize); Chrysler Mus., Norfolk, VA, 1985 (retrospective)

Member: ANA, 1912.

Work: Chrysler Mus., Norfolk, VA (bequeathed her collection); Calif. Hist. Soc.

Comments: An expatriate Impressionist painter who W.M. Chase once said was "the best woman painter alive." She came from a prominent California family and moved at age 15 to New York City. After her father died in 1896 she lived in Paris, where she studied and sketched extensively in museums and also recorded her travels. She married Goldsborough Serpell in 1912 but became ill and lived the last year of her life in Norfolk, VA. Many of her paintings are reminiscent of 17th century Dutch paintings in their tonal quality and subjects, while she also created a large number of genre pieces.

Sources: WW13; article, Antiques & Arts Weekly (Dec. 13, 1985, p.104); Pisano, One Hundred Years...the National Association of Women Artists, 84; Fink, American Art at the Nineteenth-Century Paris Salons, 403; Falk, Exh. Record Series.