A portrait of an unidentified woman of the Taos Pueblo draped in a mulit-color shawl and holding a sleeping infant. The painting is oil on board and is inscribed at lower right: "D. E. Brett/Taos/1928." On the verso is an inscribed title, "The Eternal Mother," and a paper exhibition label from the Imperial Gallery of Art, London, with inscribed title: "The Eternal Mother." A plate mounted on the front of the frame gives a second title: "Madonna in Taos/The Honorable Dorothy Eugenie Brett/English/Born 1883."
Description:
Dorothy Brett, British-American painter. Brett was born in England and studied at the Slade School of Art and University College, London. In London, she was close friends with notable authors such as Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence. In 1924, Brett went to Taos, New Mexico, with Lawrence and his wife Frieda von Richthofen Lawrence to visit Mabel Dodge Luhan. She settled there permanently and became a United States citizen in 1938. Known as "Brett" by friends and family, she was deaf for the majority of her life. Brett died in Taos in 1977., Gift of Fania Marinoff Van Vechten, 1970., and Title devised by cataloger.