The life and art of Florine Stettheimer

by Barbara J. Bloemink

Carl Van Vechten wrote of Florine Stettheimer after her death in 1944, "There have been important women painters in the history of art [and] Stettheimer is one of the most distinctive of the lot. She was both the historian and the critic of her period ... in painting that has few rivals in her day or ours." Yet today Stettheimer remains an oddity, known largely as an eccentric, upper-middle-class German-Jewish spinster who lived in New York with her two sisters and mother and who accomplished her best work when she was over fifty years old. In this book, Barbara Bloemink presents the first full account of Stettheimer's life and art, showing that her bold and inventive paintings provide biting social commentary on American culture of her period.