Artist

Katherine Schmidt

born Xenia, OH 1898-died Sarasota, FL 1978
Media - J0043147_1b.jpg - 89696
Katherine Schmidt, © Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0043147
Also known as
  • Katherine Schmidt Shubert
  • Katharine Schmidt
  • Katherine Schmidt Kuniyoshi
Born
Xenia, Ohio, United States
Died
Sarasota, Florida, United States
Active in
  • Little Compton, Rhode Island, United States
  • New York, New York, United States
Biography

At age thirteen Katherine Schmidt persuaded her reluctant parents to allow her to attend Saturday classes at the Art Students League in New York. After completing high school she worked with Kenneth Hayes Miller at the League and there met Yasuo Kuniyoshi, to whom she was married for thirteen years. During the twenties and thirties Schmidt exhibited frequently in New York. Press reviews of her meticulously rendered still lifes and landscapes of the 1920s, and of subsequent portrayals of the homeless and unemployed, were generally favorable. Around 1939, however, Schmidt became dissatisfied with her work and refused solo exhibitions until 1961, when she accidentally discovered a motif that concerned her for the remainder of her life. Having thrown a crumpled paper towel on a table, she returned to find a "beautiful piece of paper lying there." In her late still lifes of discarded paper and dead leaves Schmidt continued to exhibit the mastery of descriptive realism that had characterized her early work.

Virginia M. Mecklenburg Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1987)

Works by this artist (9 items)

Edward Hopper, Ryder's House, 1933, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Henry Ward Ranger through the National Academy of Design, 1981.76
Ryder’s House
Date1933
oil on canvas
On view
Edward Hopper, People in the Sun, 1960, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., 1969.47.61
People in the Sun
Date1960
oil on canvas
On view
Edward Hopper, Cape Cod Morning, 1950, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation, 1986.6.92
Cape Cod Morning
Date1950
oil on canvas
On view
Edward Hopper, (Standing Nude), n.d., charcoal on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Exchange with the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1972.16
(Standing Nude)
Daten.d.
charcoal on paper
Not on view