Mixed media on canvas

33.5" x 43.5" Framed

29.5 x 39.5" Unframed

Frances Yvonne Twining was born on December 5, 1907 in New York City. Living in Europe until the death of her father in 1917, she and her mother returned to their hometown, South Egremont, MA. She received her first art instruction from neighbors Charles and Katherine Almond Hulbert, well-known American Impressionists. She then studied at the National Academy of Design in New York from 1925 to 1931, the Art Students League from 1928-1931, and with Charles Hawthorne in Provincetown, MA from 1928-1930.

In 1933 and 34, she won two consecutive Tiffany Foundation Fellowships at Oyster Bay, Long Island, NY, where she worked with fellow artists Luigi Luccioni, Paul Cadmus and Edna Reindel, who exposed her to the influences of the early Italian Renaissance painters. This resulted in a stylistic change away from Impressionism to the hard-edged formalist realism for which she would become known. When the government sponsored Public Works of Art Project began in 1933, she was employed as an easel painter until the program ended and was replaced by the Works Progress Administration. In order to participate in this program, she needed to return to her home state of Massachusetts.

Following her 1943 marriage to Irving Humber, she relocated to Seattle where Mr. Humber owned a wholesale business. She quickly established herself in Seattle's art community, bringing with her an impressive East Coast reputation and a hard-edged urban realism that was an uncommon style in the Northwest.

Humber’s exhibition history includes Seattle Art Museum (solo exhibition), Frye Museum (solo exhibition), Henry Art Gallery, Worlds Fair, N.Y., 1939, Denver Art Museum, and numerous other venues. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Seattle Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Seattle University Collection, Library of Congress, Fitchburg Art Museum, Fleming Art Museum, Oklahoma City Art Museum, Wolfsonian Institution, The Robert McLaughlan Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario, and numerous other public and private collections.

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