Acquired directly from the artist’s estate by the present owner
Exhibited
New York, D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc., Women Artists in Florida, 1920-1951, November 30, 2017 – February 22, 2018, p. 8 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
Virginia Berresford Born 1902, New Rochelle, New York Died 1995, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts 1921 Wellesley College, Massachusetts 1923 Columbia University, New York 1925-1930 Academie Moderne, Paris
Selected museum exhibitions: Boca Raton Museum of Art (2018); Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey (1994); Princeton Art Museum, New Jersey (1971); University of Maine, Orono (1965); Whitney Museum of American Art (1951); New York World’s Fair (1939)
Selected public collections: Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Detroit Institute of Art; Farnsworth Art Museum, Maine; Whitney Museum of American Art
Spanning American and European modernism, Virginia Berresford studied with Amédée Ozenfant in Paris and New York. She is best known for her innovative still-life and landscape painting, which often featured motifs from the ocean and shore. For Morning Glory and Lily Pads, 1943, Berresford blended multiple views of disparate tropical botanical subjects to create a work with an exuberant use of color, organic form, and calligraphic application of watercolor. In 1954, she opened the first commercial art gallery on Martha’s Vineyard, making significant contributions to cultural life on the island.