Lot 196: STEVENS, Angelina Vannini, (American, 1898-?):

STEVENS, Angelina Vannini, (American, 1898-?): Modernist Still Life of Tulips in a Pottery vessel, Colored Pencil Drawing, sight size 17 1/2'' x 13 1/2'', pencil signed, encased in period painted frame with overall wear, 25 1/2'' x21''. Condition - Browning to paper and the mat. The following is from the ''Daily News'' of Northampton, Massachusetts, courtesy of Susan Rice, curator of the Sellars Collection. Born in Siena, Italy, Angelina Stevens became known for her pastel portraits of children as well as for floral paintings in oil. She came to America at age three and grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts. Quincy was then known for its granite, and her father enrolled her in classes to learn to carve granite. Soon she was doing faces in charcoal, and her talents were so apparent that her teachers arranged her classes so that she could have art lessons every day. At Boston University in 1926 in a night class, she was a student of W. Lester Stevens, whom she married that same year. They had a forty-three year marriage, ending in his death in 1969, and she subjugated her own talents to promoting his work. During the many years of his teaching classes, she often provided board and room for selected students, sometimes eight at a time. They toured in Europe and ultimately settled in Conway, Massachusetts after spending three years in Princeton, New Jersey, and ten years in Springfield, Massachusetts. They had a son, Milton, who became an industrial designer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She began painting children's portraits in Ohio in order to raise money for a museum and was so successful that her work became quite in demand. ASKART