Elizabeth Charleston was a

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " 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 fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

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 state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

, in 1910, shortly after the devastating

San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...

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 Michael H. de Young. The ...

's late art critic

Alfred Frankenstein Alfred Victor Frankenstein (October 5, 1906 – June 22, 1981) was an art and music critic, author, and professional musician. He was the long-time art and music critic for the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' from 1934 to 1965. He was noted for champ ...

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 Armand Hammer (May 21, 1898 – December 10, 1990) was an American business manager and owner, most closely associated with Occidental Petroleum, a company he ran from 1957 until his death. Called "Lenin's chosen capitalist" by the press, ...

'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 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 Bonhams is a privately owned international auction house and one of the world's oldest and largest auctioneers of fine art and antiques. It was formed by the merger in November 2001 of Bonhams & Brooks and Phillips Son & Neale. This brought to ...

& Butterfields, the world's third largest auction house). Charleston died on April 8, 1997, in

San Rafael, California San Rafael ( ; Spanish for " St. Raphael", ) is a city and the county seat of Marin County, California, United States. The city is located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's populatio ...

, 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