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Ruth Perkins Safford, Room Portraitist (1892 - 1979)



Ruth Perkins Safford, Room Portraitist, (1892 - 1979)



"Early Fall in the Back Yard"

Gouache/Watercolor on Linen Gray Rag Paper 
Signed in Pencil - Lower Right Corner
Image Size 16 X 12.5 inches
Framed with glass: 22 X 18.5

Way before there was HGTV and tons of decorating ideas.  There was Ruth Perkins Safford, who set out to document many of the great American interiors by watercolor.  She painstakingly drew interior perspectives and then knitted the interior finishes and furnishings on to the paper.  In this regard, she is best known for being the portrait painter of famous interiors of historic homes.  

She started painting interiors after one of her early interior paintings was on display in a frame shop where the late Andrew Mellon saw it.  He said to the proprietor, "This is excellent work.  Whoever painted this should do more like it."  That chance remark changed her whole career.  Mr. Mellon is most noted for generously giving to establish the National Gallery of Art.   

In an article from American Artist she describes her techniques and methods:  She states:  "I use gray or tan Italian linen-rag paper mounted on heavy beaver board.  My paints are transparent watercolors of the best (most permanent) pigments I can obtain plus a mixture of white-of-egg and titanium oxide.  This gives me the thinnest possible opaque content and, at the same time, the whitest white.  I use fairly large sable brushes." 

Ms. Safford, born in Boston, resided in Blue Hill, ME and Washington, DC.  She studied/graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art.  She was a member of the Guild of Boston Artists, the Washington Art Club, and the Copley Society, as well as the North Shore Arts Association.  Her commissions include interiors of Gunston Hall, the National Cathedral and the Lee Mansion.  A travel exhibit was sponsored by the Virginia Museum of Fine Art entitled:  Interiors of Famous Homes of Virginia.  

She had over 100 solo exhibitions and sold works at some noted galleries including:  Vose Galleries (Boston) and Grand Central Art Galleries (NYC).  The headline for her obituary in the Washington Post calls her a "Room Portraitist" and provides a betrayal of a sophisticated lady that had artistic spunk.  I recommend reading it, dated August 29, 1979.              



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