Bernice Perry Sutton (1908 - 1977)

Jones & Laughlin Mills (Untitled), 1934, oil on panel, signed lower right, 20 x 24 inches, signed and dated August, 1934 verso, inscribed "Miss Perry" verso, nails from old exhibition label verso; literature: Oh, for the Life of a Carnegie Tech Artist on a Breezy Hilltop This Weather!, The Pittsburgh Press, July 29, 1934 (illustration featuring the artist painting this work (or a study for this work))

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Bernice Perry Sutton was an American painter who worked mainly in Pennsylvania and New York. Her oeuvre consisted of landscapes, still life and figure painting. She painted Jones & Laughlin Mills (Untitled) while living in Pittsburgh and studying at Carnegie Tech. A July 29, 1934 article in The Pittsburgh Press features Sutton working en plein aire on the present work (or a study). Although the subject of the work is heavy industry, the article describes a more bucolic scene, "The life of an artist pays handsome dividends in coolness when a breezy hill-top becomes the studio and Mother Nature provides a setting for the model, a steel mill below. Shown above are members of a Carnegie Tech art class wielding their brushes in a special summer session which offers relaxation as well as instruction in the outdoor 'class room.' The class at present is engaged in sketching the Jones & Laughlin mills from an Oakland hillside. Norwood MacGilvary is the instructor."

Born on October 18, 1908, in Akron, New York, Sutton studied with Judson Smith in Woodstock and at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh, where she was enrolled from 1932 to 1937. She traveled regularly to her home in Akron, New York and attended lectures at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, including with Charles Burchfield. In 1941, Sutton was elected as a member of the Patteran Society of Buffalo, together with her sister Virginia Perry Trudell (1918 – 1986), who was also an artist. Sutton was a Patteran Officer beginning in June 1944 as a member of Executive Committee and as one of three Board Directors in 1955-1958, as well as Chairperson of the Exhibition Committee 1955-1958.

Beginning in the 1930s, she exhibited extensively in Pennsylvania and New York including at the Pittsburgh Art Association at the Carnegie between 1936 and 1945, and at The Patteran Society in Buffalo from 1942 until her death. Her art was also featured at the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts from 1941 to 1945 and the Western New York Exhibitions at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo. In 1954, her painting “Still Life with Fruit” earned the William Hengerer Co. Prize at the 22nd Annual Western New York Exhibition held by the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy at the Albright Art Gallery. She is listed in Who Was Who in American Art and other standard references.