
Doris Lee
American, 1905-1983
Family Reunion, 1942
Oil on canvas
24 x 34 inches
Signed lower right
SOLD
Doris Lee was a renowned American Scene painter and illustrator, receiving widespread recognition for her paintings from the 1930s and 1940s. Lee studied at the Kansas City Art Institute with American Impressionist painter Ernest Lawson, in Paris with French Cubist painter André Lhote, and at the California School of Fine Arts with Arnold Blanch. Following these experiences, she established studios in New York and Woodstock during the early 1930s. Lee’s early style aligned with the Regionalist movement in art that depicted life in rural America during the Depression. The present work, Family Reunion, depicts a gathering of a large, extended family within a rural dining room, presumably set on a farm in Woodstock. Decorated with old-fashioned bric-a-brac, mismatched dining chairs, lacy curtains, and floral wallpaper, the room evokes nostalgia and charm as a family gathers to share a meal. The reunion celebrates the furlough of the uniformed officer at the table, with a blue star service banner proudly hung on the dining room wall.
