One of two more today, both drawings, by Esther Estelle ("Stella") Pressoir (American, 1902-1980. I knew nothing of Pressoir when I found several works by her 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.
Like the other today, this one seems very French to me, a lyrical line drawn portrait of what I take for a young man, reclining and seeming very relaxed, one leg crossed gracefully over the other. Just lovely.
7 3/4" x 5 1/2" as mounted. Drawing itself 6 5/8" x 3 7/8". Glue spots visible around the perimeter of the drawing where it was pasted down (rubber cement I think) to the backing paper and a bit of smear to the black ink on and just below her signature, original to it and all of a piece with it.
