DORIS ROSENTHAL (1895-1971)
Available Work | Biography
Biography • Doris Rosenthal (1895-1971)
Doris Rosenthal dedicated her art to portraying Latin American culture in all its complexities. After being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1931, Rosenthal used the opportunity to travel to Mexico. For the following 13 consecutive summers Rosenthal journeyed into Mexico and Central America. She stayed in remote villages and became trusted by the local people which she portrayed with care in her paintings. In time, the Mexican government regarded Rosenthal as an ambassador of good will from the United States. It is from Rosenthal’s intimate experiences of Latin American village life that she was able to create emotional powerful images of its occupants’ activities.
Doris Rosenthal was born in California in 1889 where she remained until she graduated from the Los Angeles State Teachers College. She then moved to New York to continue with graduate studies at Columbia from 1912 to 1913. From 1918 until 1919, she studied at the Artist Students League in New York with George Bellows and John Sloan. She also studied in Europe for some time from 1920 to 1921. Rosenthal taught at the Teachers College and Monroe High School, both in New York City. She also taught at Columbia University as an art instructor in 1925. Her teaching positions provided Rosenthal with the finances and facilities to paint, as well as a doorway into the art community.
Rosenthal had a long exhibition run throughout New York art institutions. She exhibited twelve times at the Society of Independent Artists from 1918 up until 1942. She showed her work regularly at the annual Whitney Museum of American Art from 1925 until 1946. She also exhibited at the Corcoran Galleries biennials nine times between 1930 and 1953. Later, she exhibited at the National Academy of Design annuals from 1942 until 1949. Rosenthal showed her paintings on a national level as well, with fifteen annuals at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1934 until 1966 and sixteen annuals at the Art Institute of Chicago between 1930 and 1944. She had an equally long run at the Carnegie International Annual Exhibition in Pittsburgh from 1930 up to 1948. In addition to two Guggenheim Fellowships (1931 and 1936), Rosenthal also received a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1952.
Many of Rosenthal’s works from the Twenties show her interest in the people and places surrounding her studio on 3rd Avenue. The subjects of her paintings in the late Twenties show that she was searching the East Coast for new areas to explore. Besides New York City, she painted regularly at summer destinations in Connecticut and in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She had a summer studio at Silvermine in Norwalk, Connecticut in the early Thirties.
Doris Rosenthal’s 1931 Guggenheim Fellowship allowed her to travel to Mexico. There she found the focus of her work- Old Mexico, its color, its people and its landscape. The land and its people enchanted her and it became her goal to portray Mexican culture for Americans unable to see it themselves. In the Thirties, her unique series of Mexican work, which she continued to produce with her regular visits, attracted the attention of the famous Midtown Galleries which became her life-long dealer. While Mexican subjects were frequently represented in her work after 1931, Rosenthal continued to mix in New York City subjects, as well as subjects from Silvermine and Provincetown.
Rosenthal found her focus in exotic portrayals of Mexico, yet it was the narrative quality of her work present in both her figurative and landscape work which made her art successful. She felt equally comfortable representing geography or culture in her paintings and they were always produced with a lyrical effect. It is for this reason that Rosenthal was well-thought of during her time which is exemplified by her lengthy exhibition record and her inclusion in Robert Henke’s American Women Painters which focuses on the best ten female painters of the 1930s and 1940s.
Rosenthal’s paintings are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Addison Gallery of American Art, and the San Diego Museum of Art.