Cora Lee Despeaux (1901 - 1982)

Still Life (perhaps In the Kitchen), c. 1930s, oil on board, signed lower right, 24 x 18 inches, perhaps exhibited at the Spring Salons of America, American Art Association, Anderson Galleries, New York, NY, April 20 - May 9, 1931, presented in a new frame

$3250

Still Life (perhaps In the Kitchen) is a rare example of Baltimore modernism from the early 1930s. Cora Lee Despeaux was an illustrator, arts educator, and painter. Born in Maryland, Despeaux spent most of her adult life in and around Baltimore. She was the product of the Baltimore public schools, graduating from Eastern High School in 1915 and from the Teacher's Training School in 1917. Despeaux then studied at the Maryland Institute of Art with Charles H. Walther and her soon-to-be husband, Howard Despeaux. She was one of the Baltimore "Modernists," whose work was rejected in the mid-1920s by Hans Shuler the Director of the Maryland Institute of Arts. She joined Walther and her husband as an early member of the Society of Baltimore Independent Artists and exhibited with the group. She was also a member of New York's Society of Independent Artists.

In 1927, she received critical attention when one of her drawings, Water Front, won an honorable mention in The Evening Sun's (Baltimore) Black and White Sketch Competition. By the following year, Despeaux became a regular illustrator for The Baltimore Sun, an assignment which continued through 1930. Created as black and white cut-outs, Despeaux's art deco-influenced scenes were also published in newspapers as far away as New Orleans. In 1930, she won second prize in The Evening Sun's Tenth Annual Black and White Sketch Competition. In 1931, Despeaux exhibited at the Salons of America in New York City and the couple were honored withe a two-person exhibition at the Friends of Art House. Press reports indicated the show was also scheduled to take place at the Baltimore Museum of Art, though it is unclear whether that exhibition occurred. Two years later in 1933, Despeaux was a founding exhibitor in Baltimore's Salon Des Refuses at the Charcoal Club. The show consisted of sixty-eight modernist paintings, prints, and sculptures that were rejected by the Baltimore Museum of Art's First Annual Exhibition of Maryland Painters, Sculptors, and Printmakers. By 1935, however, Despeaux and other modernists were accepted into the All Maryland exhibitions at the Baltimore Art Museum. She also exhibited at the 1937 and 1938 exhibitions, as well as with the Baltimore Artist's Union at Baltimore's Municipal Museum of Art. By the dawn of World War II, the record of Despeaux's art production becomes thin and little is know of her activities after the war.

In addition to her fine art practice, Despeaux worked during the 1930s through the 1950s as an arts educator for the Baltimore Public Schools, including running children's programs, acting as an art department head, and providing instruction to other art teachers. Posthumously, in 1999, Despeaux's paintings were included in an exhibition at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts of artists from the "Snallygaster School," a loose affiliation of painters who worked in the Middletown Valley of Maryland with Charles H. Walther. The following year, the museum acquired one of Despeaux's paintings for its permanent collection.