?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
Dixon, Maria R. (1855-1897) The Last Mouthful.
Circa 1890.
Oil on canvas, signed lower left; 535 x 430 mm; 21 x 17 in.
Exhibited Brooklyn Art Club, 1890. The Woman's Art Club, New York, April 1890. Chicago, October 1894, number 104 with label.
Literature "Palette and Brush," Brooklyn Daily Standard, February 6, 1890. "Picture Exhibitions and Sales," The Art Amateur, New York, April 1890, volume 22, number 5, page 93.
According to the artist's letter dated 1896, the model of the present portrait was a girl who came to Dixon's studio begging for food. Dixon brought her and her sister a bowl of bread and milk and sketched them.
Dixon used the gender-neutral M.R. Dixon when signing her work. After her unexpected death in 1897, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote: "One of her peculiarities was that she did not desire it to be widely known that she was a woman. Her first initials were always used instead of her first name. Perhaps there was a good business reason for that." She was born in Sag Harbor, Long Island, and studied at the Art Students League in New York, and pursued instruction with William Morgan, William Rimmer, Charles Yardley Turner and William Merritt Chase. Widowed in 1884, she lived, worked and taught painting and drawing in Brooklyn. She was also a member of the New York Water Color Club and the Brooklyn Art Club, exhibiting with these clubs, and with the Women's Art Club of New York and the National Academy of Design. She was known for her life-size portraits, and her powerful brushstrokes. She often used her daughter, Matilda, as a model and always worked from life.
