'Lady in a Sun Hat' by Helen Dooley, Carmel Art Association, Laguna Beach, California School of Fine Arts, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art

Description

Signed lower right, 'Dooley' for Helen Dooley (American, 1907-1994); additionally signed, verso, and titled 'Hat Lady'.
Exhibited: Carmel Art Association, … more Signed lower right, 'Dooley' for Helen Dooley (American, 1907-1994); additionally signed, verso, and titled 'Hat Lady'.
Exhibited: Carmel Art Association, California, 1983 (exhibition label)
Provenance: Dr. Richard Ferguson, San Francisco (receipt).

Helen Bertha Dooley was born in San Jose, California, and first attended San Jose State College (now San Jose State University), graduating in 1928. She then continued her art studies at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and, subsequently, at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and, in 1948, at New York's Columbia University. During the 1930s, she also studied with Douglas Donaldson, Maurice Sterne and Millard Sheets among other pioneers of California Modernism.

In 1948, Dooley was appointed Professor of Art at the the College of the Pacific, a position that she held until her retirement in 1964. She then moved to Carmel, California where she opened the Dooley Art Gallery which became a fixture of the Carmel art community for over thirty years.

Dooley was a member of the Society of Western Artists, the West Coast Watercolor Society and the Carmel Art Association. She exhibited widely and with success including at the Haggin Museum (1962), the Oakland Art Gallery (1930s, 1943, 1945), the California Palace of the Legion of Honor (1951, 1st prize), the De Young Museum (1951), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (1943, 1945), the Carmel Art Guild (1946), the Springville Museum of Art (Utah), the Crocker Art Gallery, and the Laguna Beach Art Association. She also exhibited with the American Watercolor Society, at the Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, the Royal Watercolor Society in London and the Carmel Art Association among other national and international institutions. Helen Dooley's work are held in private and public locations including the permanent collections of Japan's Shimizu Art Museum and the Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art. We are pleased to offer a large and exuberant figural work by this notable California Modernist.

Reference:
Artists in California 1786-1940, Third Edition, Edan Milton Hughes: Crocker Art Museum, Sheridan Books 2002, Vol. 1, page 317-318; Who Was Who in American Art 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America, Peter Hastings Falk, Sound View Press 1999, Vol. 1, page 940-941; et al. less