1 Painting in Collection
Lucy Doane
DOANE, LUCY
Works in Select Public Collections
Bennington Museum, VT; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Selected Recent Exhibitions
Art in War: OEM Purchases from a National Competition, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 1942
Born 1908 Nahant, Massachusetts
Died 2010 Nahant, Massachusetts
Lucy Doane was an established artist, illustrator and teacher whose regionalist style captured the life of the U.S. eastern seaboard during the early part of the 20th century.
Born in Nahant, Massachusetts Lucy Doane graduated from Lynn Classical High School in 1925. She discovered a passion for artmaking early on in her life and went on to pursue an undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts College of Art (1929), and an MFA from Teachers College at Columbia University in New York. She did further study at the Netherlands Institute of History and Art.
Early in her career, Doane was known as an illustrator of children's books, including the popular Pennie, which was published by Arlo Publishing Company in 1927. As Doane matured as an artist, her attention shifted to painting. She was enchanted by landscapes of Vermont and the shores of the eastern U.S. coastline. Sailing, in the Wolfson Collection, is a subject that Doane explored often in her work. The canvas is divided up into 4 sections; waves and shoreline, sailboats, dunes and a stormy sky. The abstracted swirl of wind and wave in the foreground adds playful energy and suggests that Doane did not restrict herself to realistic representations of the land around her but had knowledge of symbolist and abstract approaches. The simplified, flat forms show the influence of Modernism’s flattened planes.
Doane taught art for several years at Keene Teachers' College in New Hampshire and then become Director of Art for the Rutland, Vermont public schools. She served for decades, retiring in 1971. Doane liked to travel and took numerous trips to Europe and Asia.
After retiring from teaching, Doane lived for a number of years in Bennington, Vermont, where she was active with the Bennington Area Acts Council, the Southern Vermont Arts Center and the Bennington Museum. During her lifetime she exhibited at galleries and museums in New England and New York. In 1991, at age 83, she was honored by being made a fellow of the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences, in recognition of her "outstanding contribution to the cultural resources of the state."