Doris Emrick Lee (American, 1983)

Doris Emrick Lee (American, February 1, 1905–June 16, 1983) is a Regionalist painter who was active from the 1930s through the 1960s. She was born in Illinois, and attended Rockford College. After graduating in 1927, she traveled to Europe to study painting with André Lhote (French, 1885–1962). Lee returned to the United States to continue her studies at the Art Institute of Kansas City, where she worked under Ernest Lawson (American, 1873–1939), and then moved on to California School of Fine Arts.

In 1935, she won the Logan Prize from the Chicago Art Institute for her Thanksgiving Dinner, a painting which depicts a highly detailed and whimsical scene of women and children in the kitchen preparing dinner. Lee eventually moved to New York and taught at the Art Students League. She also had a studio in Woodstock and exhibited at the Woodstock Gallery. While in New York City, Lee worked in a studio alongside Yasuo Kuniyoshi (American/Japanese, 1893–1953) and Emil Ganso (American, 1895–1941).

The artist was commissioned by the United States Department of the Treasury to paint murals for the General Post Office in Washington D.C., and she was also commissioned by the Works Progress Administration to paint a mural on a post office in Summerville, GA. In the 1940s, she was commissioned by Life magazine to illustrate several travel articles in Mexico, Morocco, and Cuba. Seeing indigenous and Folk Art works influenced her shift in style to more reduced, two dimensional forms.

During the 1960s, Lee began showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease, but she kept making paintings. Her works can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Phillips Collection, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Her estate is represented by D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc. in New York.

Timeline

1905
Born: Aledo, IL
1927
Graduated from Rockford College, IL
1930
Attended the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, CA
1931
Moved permanently to Woodstock, NY
1932
Exhibited in the first Whitney Biennial exhibition
1935
Awarded the Logan Medal of the Arts from the Chicago Art Institute with her painting “Thanksgiving Dinner”
1937
Painted two murals in the Main Post Office in Washington, DC and another in the Summerville, Georgia Post Office
1936–1939
Invited to be a summer guest artist at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center
1939
Invited to exhibit at the New York World's Fair
1943–1944
Invited as guest artist at Michigan State College in Lansing, MI
1944
Awarded the Carnegie prize
1946
Toured central America
1983
Died: Clearwater, FL

Exhibitions

1939
New York’s World Fair
1932
Whitney Biennial Exhibition