Elizabeth Charleston was a

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

native who painted impressionist flower and landscape paintings. Charleston began painting at the age of 50, while recovering from an automobile accident.

Life and work

Elizabeth Charleston was born in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, in 1910, shortly after the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906. She attended the Katherine Delmar Burke School and lived the life of a wealthy San Franciscan of the time. During her youth, she lived in France, and those memories later were reflected in her works. Her family was closely connected with the San Francisco Bay Area arts community. At the age of 50, Charleston was in an automobile accident which limited her activities and mobility. She began painting for the first time while recovering. The

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...

's late art critic Alfred Frankenstein reviewed her showing at the Pomeroy Gallery in 1968, and said Charleston had a "wonderful eye" for flowers -- "totally charming, decorative and delectable." Most of her works were impressionist oil paintings of flowers and the French countryside. Her works are available widely today, and have been shown in numerous museums and galleries in the US, Brussels, and Paris, including Hammer Galleries in NY (at least four one-woman exhibitions at Armand Hammer's famed galleries), Frank H. Boos Gallery in Bloomfield MI, Conacher Galleries in San Francisco, Salon des Femmes Peintres in Paris in 1974, the Salon exhibition at

Société des Artistes Français The Société des Artistes Français (, meaning "Society of French Artists") is the association of French painters and sculptors established in 1881. Its annual exhibition is called the "Salon des artistes français" (not to be confused with the ...

in 1973, the US Embassy in Brussels, and at the Nationale des Beaux Arts Exposition du Tricentenaire in 1973. Charleston is listed in Clara, the National Museum of Women in the Arts' database of women in the Arts. Charleston is popular with San Francisco Bay Area collectors, including Laura King Pfaff (chairman of Bonhams & Butterfields, the world's third largest auction house). Charleston died on April 8, 1997, in

San Rafael, California San Rafael ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for "Raphael (archangel), St. Raphael", ) is a city and the county seat of Marin County, California, Marin County, California, United States. The city is located in the North Bay (San Francisco Bay Area), ...

, near San Francisco.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Charleston, Elizabeth 1910 births 1997 deaths American women painters American contemporary painters American Impressionist painters Artists from San Francisco Painters from California 20th-century American painters 20th-century American women artists