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Betty ParsonsCeleste Beach, Acapulco Mexico, 1940Graphite and gouache on paper15 6/8 x 19 5/8 in (40.01 x 50.16 cm)
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Betty ParsonsAix en Provence, 1927Graphite and watercolor on paper13 5/8 x 20 in (34.92 x 50.8 cm)
17 x 23 x 1 3/4 in (43.2 x 58.4 x 4.4 cm) -
Betty ParsonsBreton Woman, 1929Pencil and gouache on paper24 x 17 6/8 in (60.96 x 45.09 cm)
26 7/8 x 21 x 1 5/8 in framed (68.3 x 53.3 x 4.1 cm framed) -
Betty ParsonsUntitled (Male Figure), c. 1922Bronze15 x 6 1/2 x 4 5/8 in (38.1 x 16.51 x 12.06 cm)
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Betty ParsonsUntitled (Cat), c. 1922Bronze8 x 4 5/8 x 5 in (20.32 x 12.06 x 12.7 cm)
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Betty ParsonsUntitled, 1948Oil and acrylic on canvas20 x 24 in (50.8 x 60.96 cm)
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Betty ParsonsRockport, 1943Graphite and gouache on paper17 1/2 x 23 3/4 in (44.5 x 60.3 cm)
20 3/4 x 26 3/4 x 1 3/4 in framed (52.7 x 67.9 x 4.4 cm framed) -
Betty ParsonsThe Circle, 1947Gouache on paper16 x 20 in (40.64 x 50.8 cm)
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Betty ParsonsTITLE UNKNOWN, 1940Ink on paper9 1/4 x 6 1/8 in
Parsons's early work is intimately tied to her travels—both around the United States and internationally—exploring destinations through both educational and recreational lenses. Throughout the 1920s, Parsons studied with sculptors Antoine Bourdelle and Ossip Zadkine in Paris, as well as with Arthur Lindsay, a landscape painter. In 1933, Parsons returned to New York via California, where she taught and made sculpture, continuing all the while to paint portraits and sketchbook-sized landscapes in which villages appear across a grassy expanse or tiny white boats bespeckle an inviolable sea. Parsons often drew on a sense of place in her work, and through her training in landscape painting, developed keen powers of observation before beginning to paint abstractly in 1947. Parsons described this shift as an effort to capture not what a place or event “looked like, but what it made [her] feel.”