?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
LETTA CRAPO-SMITH A Seated Woman and Child at the Beach.
Pastel and gouache on paper, 1900. 540x355 mm; 21 1/4x14 inches. Signed and dated in pastel, lower left recto.
Provenance: Christie's, New York, December 2, 1988, lot 244; private collection, New York.
Born into a prominent Michigan family (her grandfather, Henry H. Crapo, was governor of the state from 1865-1869 and her father was a successful lumber baron), Crapo-Smith (1862-1921) spent much of her childhood in Detroit society. In 1890, she traveled to Europe where she studied at the Académie Julian, Paris and stayed in Europe for nearly two decades, living and working in France, Italy, and England. She exhibited extensively, including being the first woman from Detroit included in the Salon des Artistes Français in 1890, in the Woman's Building at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and at the Salon des Beaux Arts from 1902 onwards. Around 1906, she returned to Detroit, becoming involved with Detroit Society of Women Painters and serving as their President for many years. She was praised for her skills as a colorist, with the Detroit Institute of Arts i>Bulletin describing her painting The First Birthday, which had been exhibited throughout Paris and the United States, including the Louvre for a short period, "The variegated notes—the red crib, the greens in sunlight and shadow, the dull tones of the matron's dress, and the dull red of the tile and brick of the house, all combine to form one general tone with which no single note conflicts" In 1914, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was forced to stop painting.
