Artist

Blanche Lazzell

born Maidsville, WV 1878-died Morgantown, WV 1956
Also known as
  • Nettie Blanche Lazzell
Born
Maidsville, West Virginia, United States
Died
Morgantown, West Virginia, United States
Active in
  • Paris, France
  • Provincetown, Massachusetts, United States
Biography

Born near Maidsville, West Virginia, Blanche Lazzell enrolled at the West Virginia Conference Seminary (now West Virginia Wesleyan College) in 1894. After attending South Carolina Co-Educational Institute in Edgefield in 1899, she studied art at West Virginia University, receiving a degree in art history and the fine arts in 1905. She moved to New York in 1907 and enrolled at the Art Students League, where she studied with William Merritt Chase and alongside Georgia O'Keeffe. Lazzell traveled throughout Europe in 1912 and took classes in Paris at the Academie Julian and the Academie Moderne headed by Charles Guerin and Charles Rosen. By 1913, Lazzell had returned to West Virginia and opened a school. In 1915 she attended the Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which had become a meeting place for artists returning from Europe to escape the chaos of World War I. In 1916 Lazzell and several other artists exhibited their work in color woodblock at the studio of E. Ambrose Webster. With the success of this show, the Provincetown Printers Group became the first color-woodblock society to be established. During a trip to Europe in 1923, Lazzell studied cubism with Fernand Leger and also received instruction from Andre Lhote and Albert Gleizes. She returned to America in 1924, and from 1937 to 1938 studied with the abstract artist Hans Hofmann.

Joann Moser Singular Impressions: The Monotype in America (Washington, D.C. and London: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1997)

Works by this artist (3 items)

Benjamin West, Mary Hopkinson, ca. 1764, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, George Buchanan Coale Collection, 1926.6.1
Mary Hopkinson
Artist
Dateca. 1764
oil on canvas
On view
Benjamin West, Self-Portrait, 1819, oil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Capitol, 1917.2.3
Self-Portrait
Date1819
oil on paperboard
Not on view
Benjamin West, Helen Brought to Paris, 1776, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1969.33
Helen Brought to Paris
Date1776
oil on canvas
Not on view