Sophie Elaine Harpe Sold at Auction Prices

SOPHIE HARPE Abstract Figure.

SOPHIE HARPE Abstract Figure. Oil on canvas, circa 1940. 765x605 mm; 30 1/4x24 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto, and titled in ink, verso. Ex-collection Spencer Helfen Fine Arts, Beverly Hills, with a label on the frame back; private collection of Betty and Douglas Duffy (owners of Bethesda Art Gallery); thence by descent to current owner, private collection, Houston. Harpe (1895-1981) was born in Quebec and studied at the National Academy of Design, New York, and both the École des Beaux-Arts and Académie Julian, Paris. During the late 1910s, she went to Standford University to pursue a Master of Arts and remained in California, where she began a career as an arts teacher, concurrently exhibiting at galleries in California and at the Grand Central Gallery, New York, from the 1930s until the end of her career. Her colorful compositions ranged from purely abstract forms to modernist landscapes.