Shop Girls

Elizabeth Sparhawk-JonesWW-1912-143100

1912·Oil on canvas·96.9 × 122.1 cm (38 1/8 × 48 1/16 in.)

In 1912 the department store was a relatively new and important urban institution. Shop Girls depicts female employees as they cut cloth from fabric bolts and ready them for sale. Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones rendered this modern subject in rapid, open brushwork, paying particular attention to effects of light and atmosphere. Her work of this period often represented women in the modern city: nursemaids at home, women strolling in the park, shoppers, and store clerks. Sparhawk-Jones studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she learned from artists William Merritt Chase and Cecilia Beaux. She developed an energetic painting style that drew from both Realism and Impressionism.

Catalogue

Year: 1912
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 96.9 × 122.1 cm (38 1/8 × 48 1/16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones

Artist

Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones

Painting

Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones was an American painter and printmaker active from the early twentieth century through the 1960s. Working primarily in oil and watercolor, she developed a distinctive approach to landscape and figurative subjects that integrated modernist compositional strategies with a refined attention to light and atmosphere. Her work has been held by institutional collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

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