Florine Stettheimer Art for Sale at Auction

Portrait painter, Flower painter, b. 1871 - d. 1944

(b Rochester, New York 1871; d New York, New York 1944) American painter. Florine Stettheimer spent her early years in Germany, and later settled in New York around 1914. It was in New York where she became acquainted with Marchel Duchamp, Gaston Lachaise, and Marsden Hartley, and began her fascination and experimentation with the avant-garde. An eccentric woman of the world, Stettheimer enjoyed a life of painting, writing, and entertaining many of the most powerful art spirits of the twenties and thirties. Stettheimer had no real occasion to sell paintings; she painted for her own pleasure and preferred to keep her creations or give them to family and friends. As a result, Stettheimer's work is quite rare; the majority of her pictures hang in museum collections including: the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art; and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The artist is perhaps best known for designing the sets for Four Seasons in Three Acts, an opera by Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein. Stettheimer often painted flowers, decorated either in a bouquet or in a vase. (Credit: Christie’s, New York, Important American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries. December 4, 1992, Lot 132A)