Gladys Rockmore Davis Mother & Child Portrait

This lovely portait by Gladys Rockmore Davis (American, 1901-1967) depicts a mother child, and dates from the 1940s or 1950s. Frame measures 36.5 x 26.5 inches and the stretcher measures 29.5 by 19 inches. Davis studied with John Norton and George Bellows at the Art Institute of Chicago where she graduated in 1920.  For eleven years she pursued a successful career as a commercial illustrator for advertising and fashion. In the early 1930s she abandoned her commercial career and studied at the Art Students League with George Grosz.  Shortly after launching her fine art career she began to receive critical acclaim.  She won the William R. French Gold Medal at the Chicago Institute of Art in 1937. In 1939 she received honorable mention from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and third honorable mention from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased her painting, "August Afternoon", in 1940, and in 1941 she gave her first one-man show at the Rehn Gallery in New York City.  In 1951 she won the Gold Medal from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.