J. Wilson

Lovers

1948

Crayon on cardboard

12.75 x 13.5 inches

San Francisco Museum of Art label on reverse

Domestic shipping $25

If we are to speculate on the identity and motives of J. Wilson, the maker of this painting, we might conclude that the artist is a woman and that she used her first initial to avoid incurring prejudices in place at the time against female artists. Since this drawing is so interesting, and info on this artist so hard to find, we might also conclude that J. Wilson married and changed her name and either operated successfully under another name or was crowded out of art-making by the rise of abstract painting or the demands of motherhood and employment.

However, all we really know about J. Wilson comes from the painting and the exhibition label on its back. Wilson appears to have been an out-of-town member of the San Francisco Art Association who lived in what is now a beloved 19th century apartment house in Downtown, Stockton, CA. If this painting is any indication of their studio practice, they made neo-primitive figurative drawings drenched in melodrama and pathos.