Watercolor on paper, 1969, signed and dated at lower left, retaining gallery label to verso, matted and presented under glass in a House of Heydenryk frame.

Sight size 11 1/2 x 14 1/2 in.; Frame dimensions 18 x 22 in.

Art Gallery, Ltd., Raleigh, 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 the 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, her husband became artist-in-residence at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. She continued to paint and teach throughout the 1960s and 1970s are various art centers in eastern North Carolina. After her husband's death in 1989, she returned to Pennsylvania to be closer to her children and grandchildren.

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

Scattered foxing to sheet; 3 in. curved vertical mark to sheet at upper right corner, unknown substance; not examined out of the frame.