I knew nothing of Esther Estelle ("Stella") Pressoir (American, 1902-1980) when I found this ink drawing along with several other works by her at Brimfield (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 situates 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.
I believe this drawing, ink and ink wash on paper, dates to the 1930s. Feels like a portrait of domestic life to me, complete with curled up cat on the sofa, but perhaps of dueling aspects of self too--one woman (I believe, likely Pressoir herself) cozy in her hat and slippers, writing or drawing away, while the other looks ready to be out on the town!
10 1/8" x 7 1/2". Good condition, black ink (which leans a bit more toward brown now) on paper. Signed lower right, where there is a bit of spotting to the paper.
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