Lot 68: JOSEFA BACKUS (AMERICAN, 1875-1959) WINDBLOWN CEDAR Oil on canvas board: 20 x 16 in.

JOSEFA BACKUS (AMERICAN, 1875-1959)
WINDBLOWN CEDAR
Oil on canvas board: 20 x 16 in.
Framed; lower right signed: Josefa Backus


Provenance : From the artist to her son and grandson, the present owner

Other Notes: Josefa Crosby was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1875. A well trained and gifted artist, it appears she studied art in Paris, France early in life. Her known address were Englewood, New Jersey early 1920s, Washington D.C. 1928-1932, Dublin, New Hampshire starting in 1919, and she moved permanently to Washington D.C. in 1950 after the death of her second husband. She also wintered in Sea Island, Georgia 1935, 1936. However, she was a world traveler and painted works of London, the Pacific, New York, Mexico, Guatemala, and Puerto Rico. A wealthy woman her first marriage was to Oscar Sewall and after his death to Grosvenor Hyde Backus.

Josefa was close friends with Edward Henry Potthast, indeed according to the family she went back to painting full time because of Potthast's advice.

She was a member of the Washington Society of Artists and the Union des Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs in Paris. Her work was exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Argent Gallery, New York City 1938, the Washington Society of Artists 1939, the Society of Independent Artists, the University of Virginia, in Paris, France and Majorca, Spain in 1930, and the York Gallery, Arlington, Virginia.,

Many of her works were exhibited in Dublin and surrounding towns, and a painting by her hangs in The Dublin Community Church vestry today. In 1933 a show of 48 of her paintings was hung in the vestry of the church. Another exhibition was held there in 1941.

Josefa Crosby Sewall Backus died in Washington, D.C. on August 31, 1959. Her ashes at buried in Dublin, New Hampshire.