LOÏS MAILOU JONES (1905 - 1998)
Les Vendeuses du Tissus.

Oil on linen canvas, 1961. 489x1003 mm; 19¼x39½ inches. Signed, dated and inscribed "Haiti" in oil, lower left recto. Signed and date in oil, lower left verso.

Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, the Johnson Publishing Company, Inc., Chicago; private collection, Michigan.

Illustrated: Tritobia Hayes Benjamin, The Life and Art of Loïs Mailou Jones, p. 87.

This vibrant scene of cloth sellers in Port-au-Prince is an important painting from Loïs Mailou Jones's Haitian period. Jones made a dynamic breakthrough away from her earlier Impressionist style of painting with these modern paintings. Jones took her first trip to Haiti in the summer of 1954 with the invitation of President Paul E. Magloire for a portrait commission, and made subsequent annual trips with her husband Pierre-Noël through 1969. Beginning in 1961, in Les Vendeuses du Tissus and other paintings such as Parade des Paysans and Bazar Du Quai, Port Au Prince, Haiti, Jones found inspiration in the abstract forms of the busy outdoor markets, using flattened areas of pattern and color. Today, these striking early Haitian paintings are some of the artist's most sought after and distinctive works.