Déjeuner

Discussion

FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

A painter and professional illustrator, May Wilson Preston studied under Robert Henri and William Merritt Chase at the Arts Students League, in New York, and with James McNeill Whistler, in Paris. She was the first woman to become a member of the Society of Illustrators, and she also lent her talents to the women's suffrage movement, illustrating pro-suffrage postcards, magazines, and books. Although Preston was known predominately for her illustrations, she also produced oil paintings. At the center of this formal composition, a woman is posed in an armchair, her left hand resting on a breakfast tray, while the foreground of the scene is anchored by a colorful still life of fruit arranged in a silver bowl.

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