Artwork Details
- Title
- At the Well
- Artist
- Date
- 1930s-1940s
- Location
- Dimensions
- 30 1⁄8 x 45 1⁄4 in. (76.5 x 114.8 cm)
- Credit Line
- Gift of International Business Machines Corporation
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- oil on mounted on fiberboard
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Animal — dog
- Animal — horse
- Figure group
- Landscape — road — path
- Architecture Exterior — domestic — farmhouse
- Architecture Exterior — other — well
- Landscape — farm
- Object Number
- 1969.124
Artwork Description
Doris Lee's At the Well appears to be a pastoral farm scene, yet a closer inspection reveals that women are at the center of the composition collecting water, bathing, and wrangling animals while the men observe from the background. Her signature artistic style reflected not only modernism, but American Scene painting, and self-taught artists like Grandma Moses. She also was an avid collector of folk art, including the work of William Edmondson. Lee was highly successful during her life as both a fine and commercial artist, training abroad in Paris and San Francsico. She showed frequently in New York galleries and museums including the first Whitney Biennial in 1932 and was a traveling artist- correspondent for many years for LIFE magazine.
Lee spent much of her artistic career in Woodstock, New York connecting to her rural environment through figuration, despite the popularity of movements like Abstract Expressionism. Like At the Well, many of Lee's compositions feature confident and happy women in empowering positions, including her most famous work Thanksgiving, a print of which is also part of SAAM's collection.