Rosamond Longfield-Smith (1904-1994) British/American, Original Watercolor. Depicts a demure woman wearing a babushka with an onion-domed Russian style structure in the background. Signed bottom right. 

Overall: 19 1/2 X 16 in. 

Sight: 14 1/2 X 11 in. 

#3906 . 

Rosamond Longfield-Smith was born in 1904 in Kensington Park, Barbados, the easternmost island in the Caribbean and a colony of the British Empire at the time. Her mother died a year after she was born, and her father, a doctor and agronomist, married again in 1906, acquiring dual citizenship for his family when he purchased another home in the US Virgin Islands in 1912. She grew up in a household mostly full of women, as her father traveled frequently for work, and she and her sisters were exposed to art, music, and various crafts early on. She found herself drawn to watercolors, and began capturing images of the island workers and their family servant, Theresa Goodrich, while in her early teens. In the 1920s she traveled extensively, both with her mother and alone, seeking new inspiration in landscapes and the lives of the people of Puerto Rico, Bermuda, Canada, and the United States. She settled in Chicago, Illinois and attended the Art Institute in 1922, where she experimented with both Impressionism and Expressionism, always keeping her tropical influences. Her favorite figures were usually women, often shown in idealized, serene poses. In the 1930s she lived in New York City where she exhibited with the Art Students League, although she began to distance herself from the artistic community as Abstraction slowly took over the art scene. During World War II she moved to Babson Park, Florida to stay with her family. In the 1950s and 60s she traveled to Canada and Europe where she continued to paint, focusing on dancing figures and studies in movement, although she was in fewer group exhibitions, and had no solo ones. When she returned to New York in the 1970s she settled in the Bronx, but failing health made it difficult for her to continue painting. After a stroke in 1981 she moved back to Babson Park to be closer with her family, where she passed away in 1994.