Mabel Dwight, also in the old New York Aquarium

Mabel Dwight 

born Mabel Jaque Williamson

(1876 - 1955)

American lithographer 

Thank to Scottish reader James commenting this morning on Emma Bormann's Aquarium posting today a contribution dedicated to Mabel Dwight. Like Emma Bormann and Herbert Bolivar Tschudy in before postings she was in the old New York Aquarium too. It closed in 1941. "Queer Fish", above, happens to be her most popular print. She created many prints and in large editions. Modern copies often offered at a certain international internet auction site, original prints in Fine Print Galleries. And I found four of the New York Aquarium.

"Although Mabel Dwight studied painting in her youth at the Hopkins School of Art in San Francisco, she was fifty years old before she began to practice art seriously. Born in Cincinnati, she spent her childhood and youth in New Orleans and California and also traveled extensively in France, Italy, India, and Ceylon.  

She was married 1906-1917 to printmaker Eugene Higgins (1874-1958) who trained and studied in the "Academie Julian" and the "Ecole des beaux Arts" in Paris. While she was in Paris in 1927 she became interested in lithography. Dwight, who was deaf, was a keen observer of the human comedy, which she depicted with humor and compassion in her work.

Although considered a social realist (as was Eugene Higgins) like Emma Bormann she choose crowds, the aquarium, the circus, the beach and theater for her most popular and often very humorous prints. I found many examples of her work Googling and choose for this posting some (later?) colored examples.   

"Text: National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996).

This last example chosen because Herbert Bolivar Tschudy in before posting possibly choose the same New-York Ferry for his print. 

And this one "life class" (is that her among  all the boys ?) to make you curious enough to go out and do some internet searching for this wonderful artist.
  

All pictures are mouse-clickable to embiggen en were borrowed freely from the internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only.