Artwork Information

  • Title:

    Plant (also Jade Plant and Shells)

  • Artist:

    Hartman, Rosella

  • Artist Bio:

    American, 1895–1993

  • Date:

    about 1930

  • Medium:

    Lithographic crayon

  • Dimensions:

    20 7/8 x 13 3/8 inches

  • Credit Line:

    Wichita Art Museum, Gift of Janis Conner and Joel Rosenkranz

  • Object Number:

    1998.66

  • Display:

    Not Currently on Display


About the Artwork

Rosella Harman was born in Kansas in 1894 of German-Swiss parentage. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and later at the Art Students league in New York City. In 1923, she married sculptor Paul Fiene. In 1934, Rosella received the Guggenheim Award, which afforded her a year of study near Munich, Germany.

In 1930 she was one of three artists shown in an exhibition at the Whitney Studio Galleries. A critic noted that her pastels displayed a brisk, bright coloration but urged her to pursue a broader and more monumental rendering in her drawings of plant forms, She exhibited her lithographs of plant and animal subjects at the exhibitions organized by the American Print Makers in the mid-1930s.1

From 1935-1938, Rosella worked on some of the W.P.A. projects, and one of her lithographs was used on the face of a calendar in President Roosevelt’s office. She returned to Europe in 1938 on a second Guggenheim award and had the opportunity to work with Desjobert in Paris.

1. Between the Wars, Women Artist of the Whitney Studio Club and Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion