TitleSelf-Portrait
Artist
Catharine Wharton Morris Wright
(1899 - 1988)
Date1933
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 30 1/8 × 25 in.
Framed: 41 1/4 × 36 × 2 3/8 in.
SignedSigned upper right: "Catharine Morris Wright 1933"
SubmissionANA diploma presentation, October 2, 1933
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1458-P
Label TextWright commented on this painting in the catalogue to her 1954 exhibition at Woodmere Art Gallery: "My Academy portrait. I was so overcome at being made a member that I put on my best evening dress and a very unreal smirk; and tensing all up, I sat down to paint. Four days later I took off a ruined best dress, slashed the canvas and swore. I decided I'd do myself in whatever I had on, wherever and whenever I next saw myself in a mirror. This is it--my worst dress, an awful cross-light, in the cramped quarters of a bathroom mirror: But it won the Greenough Prize at the Newport Art Association and was accepted to the Academy."
