Esther Pressoir, Artist and Model, c. 1930 Signed Lithograph (no. 1)

I knew nothing of Esther Estelle ("Stella") Pressoir (American, 1902-1980) when I found this signed lithograph along with several other works by her at Brimfield (an ink drawing and an etching also listed today, and a few more to come), 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 places her 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. 

A copy of this signed lithograph is held in the collection of the RISD museum (Pressoir was a RISD alum) and was presented along with a number of her works as part of the exhibition Art and Design from 1900 to Now in 2024. I think it is a marvelous print, showing Pressoir at home and at ease at her easel, artist and subject both, with wonderfully specific and full of life details everywhere, down to her cat at her feet and open books strewn across the floor. 

Paper size 19 1/4" x 12". Print area 11 1/4" x 8 5/8". Some curling/creasing and darkening near the edges of the large sheet of heavy rag paper, easily trimmed or concealed by a mat.