One of two more today, both drawings, by Esther Estelle ("Stella") Pressoir (American, 1902-1980). I knew nothing of Pressoir when I plucked these at Brimfield, but what a delight it has been to learn a bit about her, and Stella's star is most definitely on the rise.
Assistant Professor of Theory and History of Art and Design at the Rhode Island School of Design Suzanne M. Scanlan's recently published Esther Pressoir: A Modern Woman’s Painter situates Pressoir, a queer woman, and her work within the emerging modernist art scene of the early 20th century, both in America and abroad, and in relation to trailblazing contemporaries such as Alice Neel and Florine Stettheimer. Coming of age in the 1920s, Pressoir is presented as casting off the societal expectations of a working-class immigrant family in New England to move through the studios, galleries, and nightclubs of New York and then to have embarked on a 18,000 km bicycle trip across Europe in 1927, where she kept a daily journal and made hundreds of sketches, developing an expressionistic style that straddled figuration and abstraction. Included among her prolific output were provocative renderings of the female nude that challenged historical models, including self-portraits and intimate depictions of her longtime model, muse, and lover, a black dancer from Harlem named Florita. Here's a link to a 2024 article in Hyperallergic by Bridget Quinn about Pressoir.
This ink drawing dates to the 1930s--I think specifically 1936, based on what looks like her own catalogue number written on reverse. I read it as two men looking very at ease together in what looks to me perhaps like the interior of a houseboat, or maybe just a cottage-y sort of kitchen, pots hanging from rails and tables loaded up with with vessels. Seems very French! And very charming, down to the kerchief knotted around the neck of the seated figure, head resting on his hand. Love.
10 1/8" x 7 7/8" . Black ink on smooth paper, good condition, with just some roughness along the top edge as evident.
