Portrait of a Living Room
Dorothy Varian
DOROTHY VARIAN, 1944. OIL ON CANVAS.
Dorothy Varian was part of a group of female artists from Woodstock, New York, who despite success and prominence in their lifetime, have faded into obscurity. Classically trained in Paris, she exhibited in the capital throughout the 1920s at influential and regarded galleries, but her work was perhaps too straightforward, and not radical enough, to make significant dents in a revolutionary period. Her portrait of a living room is finely rendered in detail and elegantly composed. We are immediately situated in the domestic home, peering through an arched opening towards a room in use. It is not on airs, not trying to present itself as more than a humble home, replete with mess and life, the plants in the background imperfectly bending and the coffee table askew. Dorian’s painting is familiar, it speaks to a commonality of American home life that perhaps only a woman in this time was able to conjure. Yet this may be its downfall, it is pleasant and approachable, painted at a time when such qualities were seen within the art world as not just dull, but altogether sinful.