Anna Katharine Skeele 1896-1963) Portrait of a Young Woman c 1950s P2918

This sensitive portrait is reproduced in Maurine St Gaudens' 4-volume survey "Emerging From The Shadows: A Survey of Women Artists Working In California, 1860-1960" (on page 1011 of Volume IV), to whom we are indebted for the following biographical information (much condensed here).

Anna Skeele was born in Ohio and grew up in Ohio and Michigan, where she began to pursue her passion for art as a teenager.  Her quest soon led her to Monrovia, California, studying first at Pomona College then enrolling at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. From there she studied in New York at the Art Students League and in Paris at the Academie Jullien and the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. and finally in Florence with Felice Carena. On her return to Monrovia she started her career as an art teacher for the Monrovia-Arcadia-Duarte school district. Then she met and married fellow painter Frode Dann and in 1951 the couple founded the Pasadena School of Fine Arts, eventually moving to Pasadena in 1955. A presiding and life-long focus of her work was her interest in the people and culture of the Native American tribes of the Southwest. She exhibited widely throughout her lifetime while continuing to run the Pasadena School, and her works are represented in the collections of most of the art museums of California.

Oil on canvas. Painting measures 25" x 30" and the frame is 30" x 35".