Study of a Head
Laura Coombs Hills American
Not on view
A native of Newburyport, Massachusetts, Laura Coombs Hills began her career as an acclaimed painter of miniature portraits. This figural work, produced in the same years, reveals the artist’s considerable talents working on a larger and more ambitious scale. While best known today for her floral still-life subjects in pastel, Hills was celebrated in her lifetime for the fresh, progressive aesthetic she brought to traditional genres of portraiture and still life, both of which were associated with women artists. This profile rendering in bold strokes of pastel of an unidentified elegant young woman, in fashionable attire, reveals the modern confidence of both sitter and artist.
