Cooper Hewitt says...
Doris Lee (American, 1905-1983) was known for painting rural American scenes in a distinctive style that blended folk and modernist art. She was born Doris Elizabeth Emrick and studied art and philosophy at Rockford College in Illinois. After graduating in 1927, she married Russell Werner Lee. She studied painting in Italy and France, at the Kansas City Art Institute, and later at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco under Arnold Blanch, who became her second husband in 1939.
In the 1930s, Lee lived and worked in New York City. Her paintings were included in the first Whitney Biennial exhibition in 1932. In 1935, her painting “Thanksgiving” won the prestigious Logan Prize at the Art Institute of Chicago. Josephine Logan, the donor of the prize, disliked the painting and founded the anti-modern Society for Sanity in Art in response, adding considerably to Lee’s fame.
Lee was represented by the Maynard Walker Galleries from 1936 until 1950, and later by Associated American Artists and World House Galleries. She taught at Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (1936-1939) and Michigan State University (1943-1944). She exhibited in the New York World’s Fair (1939) and later received the Carnegie Prize (1944). During the late 1940s and 1950s, she traveled to Hollywood, Morocco, Cuba, and Mexico to write and illustrate for Life magazine.
Lee’s paintings are included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Pennsylvania Academy for the Fine Arts, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others. She is represented by D. Wigmore Fine Art in New York.
