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“Untitled (Self-Portrait)” by Peggy “Pegasus” Martin Nichols (American) - Oil on board / c. 1910–1925 - Wichita Art Museum (Kansas) #WomenInArt #PeggyMartinNichols #PegasusMartin #WichitaArtMuseum #selfportrait #WAM #BlueskyArt #artText #art #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #AmericanArtist
Created sometime between 1910 and 1925, this early- to mid-career self-portrait shows Peggy “Pegasus” Martin Nichols testing how color and posture can convey psychological presence. A radical close-up, stripped of clothing details or setting, focuses all attention on her steady, searching gaze and on the labor of painting itself, visible in every dragged and broken stroke. This small, vertically oriented painting presents a tightly cropped view of a light-skinned woman from just below the collarbone to the top of her head. She faces slightly left but looks straight toward us with wide hazel-green eyes under softly arched, dark brows. Her short brown hair is brushed back from her forehead, breaking into loose, choppy strands around her temples and ears. Coral-pink lips rest gently closed, framed by a subtle flush of color in her cheeks and chin. Thick, textured strokes of peach, rose, lavender, blue, and yellow model the planes of her face and long neck, leaving small areas of bare or scraped board that hint at quick, confident reworking. The neck tilts subtly and carries lavender and beige shadows that merge into the roughly indicated shoulders. Behind her, stacked strokes of deep blue, teal, green, and black form an abstract, flickering backdrop that pushes her luminous face forward. Nichols sometimes worked under the gender-neutral signature “Pegasus,” a strategy that may have helped her navigate an art world that often sidelined women painters. The Wichita Art Museum now holds several of her works, including intimate family portraits and socially charged scenes, allowing this self portrait to be sit alongside paintings such as “Abundance” and “A Negro Man”as part of a broader practice attentive to everyday lives in the Midwestern United States. Seen in that context, the artist studying her own face here also models the empathetic scrutiny she would later extend to others, helping renew attention to a once-obscured woman artist in American regional art history.
December 1, 2025 at 1:16 AM
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“Woman of Ariccia” by William Bell Scott (British) - Watercolor and graphite on paper / 1862 - Wichita Art Museum (Kansas) #womeninart #art #artwork #watercolor #WilliamBellScott #BritishArtist #watercolorpainting #WichitaArtMuseum #womensart #portraitofawoman #ScottishArtist #artoftheday
This 1862 watercolor and graphite painting by British artist William Bell Scott depicts, with evocative 19th-century realism, an elderly woman from the small Italian art haven Ariccia south of Rome. She sits attentively, engaged in the process of spinning yarn in a subdued interior, with muted colors and soft light emanating from a flickering off-canvas light source. Our focus is directed toward her hands as she meticulously works a spindle, creating thread. The lighting and shadows softly accentuate the folds of her clothing. A small candle and a framed picture are seen behind her. The image emphasizes the quiet concentration and dedication of the activity of spinning. The woman is portrayed with a gentle demeanor and weathered skin, suggesting a life full of experience. She wears a draped, light-colored garment, and her hands are adeptly positioned for the task at hand. The clothing is simple and practical, suitable for labor. The woman's expression is one of thoughtful focus with the task, with a modest serenity in her posture. Scott was a Scottish pre-Raphaelite painter and poet. His detailed and colorful paintings of historical, religious and contemporary themes reflect the ideas and concerns he shared with his Pre-Raphaelite friends, in particular, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Scott and his brother, David, trained at the Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh and worked for their father, an engraver, before launching their own careers as painters. Scott's association with the Pre-Raphaelite movement followed his move to London in 1837. He was then appointed Master of the Government School of Design in Newcastle in 1843. Today, he is best known for his memoirs, the Autobiographical Notes, published in two volumes in 1892. Scott presented an unvarnished picture of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his other friends in the pre-Raphaelite circle. While criticized by contemporaries for their frankness, Scott’s memoirs today are recognized as an important historical source.
April 4, 2025 at 3:39 PM
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Eva Green by Robert Henri (American) - Oil on canvas / 1907 - Wichita Art Museum (Kansas) #womeninart #art #roberthenri #artwork #portrait #womensart #oilpainting #poc #WichitaArtMuseum #fineart #portraitofawoman #americanart #henri #americanartist #africanamerican #wam #portraitofagirl #bskyart
After his move to New York, Henri dedicated himself primarily to portraiture. Eva Green is one of his finest portraits of a young person, whom he saw as embodiments of uncorrupted vitality. Painted on Christmas Day in 1907, this portrait was complet­ed after Henri returned from a trip to Holland. While there he had been deeply impressed by the works of Rembrandt and Frans Hals, whom he emulated by using broad brushstrokes, abundant pigment, earth tones, and dark backgrounds. Henri’s notes about Eva Green record a “tam-o-shanter hat…. Blue coat, blue ribbon showing and reddish ribbon sticking out from back of hair.” Not mentioned in the notes but quite significant is the fact that Eva Green is a young African American, depicted by Henri in an autonomous role commonly reserved for white youths. Henri’s interest in representing people of different races was a manifestation of the deeply felt views of humanity that animated his portrait painting throughout his lifetime. Born Robert Henry Cozad on 24 June 1865, in Cincinnati, Ohio, he spent much of his childhood in Cozad, Nebraska, a town founded by his father. In 1882, after Roberts father shot and killed a man, the Cozad family fled to the East Coast and changed their names in an attempt to disguise their true identities. In 1886, Henri enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he learned to draw by copying plaster casts of ancient statuary and studying the nude figure. Two years later he traveled to Paris, where he studied at the Academie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and came under the influence of the Barbizon School and the Impressionists. Henri returned to Philadelphia in 1891 and taught there until 1895 when he returned to Paris. During this and subse­quent visits to Europe, Henri traveled widely and studied the works of Frans Hals, Velazquez, Goya, and Manet, which would greatly influence his maturing style.
February 20, 2025 at 8:01 AM
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Somewhere in America #RobertPeterson #WichitaArtMuseum #blackart #blackartist visited while #geocaching

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December 10, 2024 at 10:34 PM
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No head for heights

Ashcan Daily have just posted this amazing etching and my stomach turned over! James E. Allen (1894-1964), Spider Boy, 1937, etching at@wichitaartmuseum The reason for that moment of nausea? He's standing high up on the skyscraper with no safety equipment. As the commentator…
No head for heights
Ashcan Daily have just posted this amazing etching and my stomach turned over! James E. Allen (1894-1964), Spider Boy, 1937, etching at@wichitaartmuseum The reason for that moment of nausea? He's standing high up on the skyscraper with no safety equipment. As the commentator said this is "showing the ease and comfort that the steelworkers who built the skyscrapers of New York City navigated their heights and dangers." But fails to mention that they must be mad to be up there!
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June 8, 2025 at 6:29 PM