Oil on canvas, signed and dated 1976 at lower left, presented in a later frame with linen liner.

SS 23.5 x 33 3/8 in.; DOA 30.75 x 40.5 in.

Private Collection, North Carolina

Born in Evanston, IL, Blakeslee began her art studies at the age of 13 at the Chicago Art Institute. Her family moved to Washington, D.C., where she enrolled at the Corcoran School of Art and Miss Catherine Critcher's School of Art. She took classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts during the first-half of the 1930s and was awarded the Academy's prestigious Cresson Scholarship twice. During her studies at the Academy, she met and married her instructor, painter Francis Speight. In 1961 she and her family moved to North Carolina upon her husband's acceptance of artist-in-residence at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC.

Blakeslee's artwork has been exhibited by the Art Institute of Chicago; Corcoran Gallery; National Academy of Design; North Carolina Museum; Pennsylvania Academy; and the 1939 Worlds Fair in San Francisco, California. Her work is held in numerous permanent collections including the Greenville Museum of Art, Greenville, NC; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, NC; National Academy of Design, New York, NY; and The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, SC.

Good estate condition.

$8,000 - 12,000