Oil on canvas, signed lower right

Painting size: 24” x 29”
Frame size: 30” x 36”

May Nobel studied at the Chicago Art Institute and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston before studying painting independently in Paris. She pursued her career in Arizona where she regularly exhibited at the Arizona State fair and chaired the Public Works of Arts Project for that state and New Mexico in 1934.

Though she lived most of her life in the American west, this painting recalls domestic interiors of Mary Cassatt and Bonnard and may be a record of her Paris living quarters. With Impressionist brushwork, Nobel captures the details of a specific room-- the striped wall paper, the fireplace mantle crowded with vases and paintings, the statue of Buddha on the piano--and so conveys warmth and familiarity.