Beulah (Elsie Sloan) Stevenson (1890/97 – 1965)

Yellow Lily, c. 1940s, oil on canvas, signed lower left, 24 x 20 inches, label verso bears artist's name and address, as well as title and original price ($300), presented in its original frame

$4250

Born in Brooklyn, Beulah Stevenson was a multi-faceted artist, curator, and instructor whose preferred media included painting, lithography, and etching. In addition to her time with Hans Hoffmann in Provincetown, Stevenson studied at the Pratt Institute and Art Students League with John Sloan. Hoffmann's influence is noteworthy in Yellow Lily, evinced by expressive brush strokes, passages of thick impasto, a strong saturated palette, and the use of implements to scrap away at the surface revealing underlying pigments and substrate. Like Hoffmann, Stevenson elevated a relatively mundane subject, a simple flower arrangement, into an explosion of color and movement.

Stevenson was an active arts leader, serving on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Women Artists, President of the New York Society of Women Artists, and Vice President of the Brooklyn Society of Artists. She was also a member of Philadelphia Print Club, the Provincetown Art Association, Society of American Graphic Artists, Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, and the American Artists Congress (before withdrawing due to concerns about associations with the Communist Party). Stevenson exhibited extensively, having nine solo shows in New York alone. She was included in group exhibitions with her member organizations, as well as the Society of Independent Artists, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Baltimore Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Riverside Museum, Portland Museum of Art, and the Museum of New Mexico, among many others. For many years, Stevenson worked as a curator at the Brooklyn Museum and her works are in its collection as well as  at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Bates College Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, and the Library of Congress. She is listed in Who Was Who in American Art and other standard references.