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Louisa seems an assured, engaging model in her fashionable empire-cut gown.

Louisa was the daughter of Indianapolis banker Stoughton Fletcher and wife of Hoosier author Booth Tarkington, whom she divorced in 1911.

The artist and Louisa were friends with a mutual interest in art.

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Mary Shepard Greene Blumenschein

Louis Fletcher, 1912

oil on canvas

50 x 30 in.

Gift of Sally Reahard

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Mary Shephard Greene was an accomplished artist who studied at the Pratt Institute in New York City and then in Paris.  She won awards for her art at the Paris Salon and the St. Louis Exposition.  In 1905 she married Ernest Blumenschein and returned with him to New York.  She taught at the Pratt Institute while illustrating for Century, McClure’s and American magazines.  In 1913, she and her husband made their first trip to Taos, New Mexico and moved permanently there in 1919.  In the 1920s, Mary returned to Paris to study jewelry making which she became her art form after moving to Taos.

Indianapolis native Louisa Fletcher and her portraitist, Mary Blumenschein, were good friends whose lively interest in the arts brought them together.  Louisa was the daughter of Indianapolis banker Stoughton Fletcher.  She became the wife of Booth Tarkington in 1902.  They spent the early years of their marriage in Paris, where they befriended Ernest and Mary Blumenschein.  The marriage between Louisa and Booth was dissolved in 1911.  Mary created this image the following year.  The deftly rendered textures, subtle color graduations, and strong sense of personality reflect her abilities as a portraitist.

Reference

Ernest L; Mary Greene; Helen Green, Blumenschein.  The Blumenschein’s of Taos, Flagstaff: Museum of Northern Arizona.  ASIN: B001ONB7X6