Lot 171
RUTH PRATT BOBBS (American 1884-1973)
Portrait of Red-haired Woman - possibly Marjorie Organ Henri - 1907
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated lower left
38 inches x 30 inches
Estimate:  $1,000 - 1,500   € 600 - 900

unsold

The sitter of this portrait looks remarkably similar to the wife of Ashcan artist Robert Henri with whom Ruth Hobbs studied. See Henri’s painting titled O in Black with Scarf, circa 1910, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.  She is also quite similar to Bobbs’s painting titled Woman in White, also circa 1910, Indianapolis Museum of Art. The identity of that sitter is attributed to Jessica Penn, who later modeled for Henri, see Jessica Penn in Black with White Plumes, circa 1908, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas. Ruth Pratt was born into a wealthy Indianapolis family and began taking art classes at age eight. In 1900, she went to Europe after the death of her parents. There, she studied art at the Academie Julian and three years later moved to New York and enrolled in the Arts Student League. In 1907, she returned to Indianapolis to continue studying at the John Herron Art Institute. By this time, Hobbs had studied with numerous well-known artists including William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. In 1912, she married William C. Bobbs, president of the Bobbs-Merrill publishing company, and opened a studio where she gained a national reputation as an accomplished portraitist.