Stallknectht's formal artistic education began in 1898 at the New York School of Applied Design for Women; she studied to be an illustrator and graduated in 1901. She married later that year, and family obligations - caring her husband (Carol Van Buren Wight, who suffered from depression and other psychological instabilities, later he became professor of classics at Johns Hopkins) and her young son- prevented her from starting a career until the mid-1920s. By then she had settled in Chatham, Massachusetts, where she became known for both her expressionist portraits and for two suites of religious paintings for the town's Congregational Church, cycles combining biblical themes with likenesses of local townspeople. Well known in Chatham, Stallknecht rarely exhibited her work elsewhere; she participated in a group show at Boston's ICA in 1950 and was featured in a solo display at the Rockland (ME) Museum in 1952, and another in San Francisco, Pasadena, and Colorado Springs in 1958. Her work, with its singular expressionist vision, was rediscovered in the 1970s with the increased attention to women artists.

Stallknecht painted numerous portraits, among them this severe, iconic image of Frances Crane Lillie (1869-1958), a summer resident of Woods Hole. Lillie, daughter of one of Chicago's important industrialist families and wife of Frank R. Lillie (eminent biologist and leader of the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory), had been trained as a physician; after moving with her husband to Chicago in 1900, she became an active philanthropist and humanitarian, deeply engaged in health and social welfare efforts the benefit of working women and children. By 1910, she had become a union organizer and described herself as a socialist. She converted to Catholicism in 1920, declaring herself for "religion and radicalism." Lillie continue her philanthropic efforts and became a passionate champion for modern art within the church. Lillie had met Stallknecht by 1936, when she published a pamphlet in support of Stallknectht’s art and her religious murals, which had met with controversy. This portrait, with its strong linear design, expressive face, and enlarge hands, is characteristic of Stallknectht’s distinctive work.

This first painting by Stallknecht to enter the MFA's collection, this is not first member of the family to join us - Frances Crane Lillie was the daughter of Richard Teller Crane, whose portrait by Anders Zorn the museum acquired from the family in 2013. Stallknectht’s visionary, expressionist approach is a welcome addition to our collection of 20th century portraits.

---