FRANCES HUNGERFORD COMBS

(American, 1876-1973)

STILL LIFE

Watercolor on Paper laid down on Card

22 x 20 Inches

Signed Lower Right, 'Combs'

 

This early Washington, D.C. painter and teacher was a member of the Washington Watercolor Club, Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers Society and the Washington Art Club. Combs was employed as a drawing teacher at the Corcoran Gallery and School of Art (1902-1914) and her work was included in their exhibition, 'Woman at the Corcoran'. Thomas Jackson Simmons, college president of Wake Forest University and curator of the Simmons collection, remarked that Frances Combs was "the best-known watercolor painter in Washington, D.C."

 

Over the course of a long and successful career, Frances Combs exhibited widely and with success including at the Washington Watercolor Club (1918-1927, 1936, 1938, 1939), the Greater Washington Independent Exhibition of 1935, the Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers Society (1937, 1939) and the Women's City Club (1941). Her works are held in numerous private and public collections including the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art.

 

Reference:

Who Was Who in American Art 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America, Peter Hastings Falk, Sound View Press 1999, Vol. 1, page 704; Mallett’s Index of Artists, Daniel Trowbridge Mallett, Peter Smith: New York 1948 Edition, R.R. Bowker Company 1935, page 86; National Portrait Gallery, Art & Artist Files, Smithsonian American Art and Portrait Gallery Library, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, Washington, D.C., 8 August 2023; et al.