OLIN TRAVIS (American, 1888-1975)
Portrait of Lota Kennedy, 1949
Oil on board
16 x 12 inches (40.6 x 30.5 cm)
Signed lower left: OLIN TRAVIS
Titled, dated, and signed verso: Lota Kennedy / ... 1949 / Olin Travis (with artist's cipher)

PROVENANCE:
Gift from artist to Lota Kennedy;
Estate of Lota Kennedy;
Private collection.

NOTE:
Lola Kennedy was an art student of the the artist.

Dallas's first native professional artist, Travis trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and began teaching at the AIC in 1914 and later at the Chicago Commercial Art School. He co-founded with his wife, painter Kathryne Hail Travis, the Art Institute of Dallas in 1926. The Travises also conducted a summer art school in the mountains near Cass, Arkansas, from the 1920s through the mid-1930s. Travis exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art at New York, as well as in the Texas artists annual at Fort Worth, the annual Dallas Allied Arts, the Texas Centennial Exposition (1936), and the Greater Texas and Pan-American Exposition (1937). Travis had a solo show at the New York Art Center in 1930 and in "Paintings and Sculpture From Sixteen American Cities" at the Museum of Modern Art in 1933-34. The Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (now the Dallas Museum of Art) also held at least three solo exhibitions for Travis. Travis was well known for his introspective portraits, including this portrait of Lota Kennedy, where he attempted to portray the psychology of the sitter.