Edith White
(1855-1946)
Still life with flowers
Oil on canvas laid to canvas
Signed lower left: Edith White
40" H x 34" W
Other Notes: Edith White was one of the only professionally trained female artists working in Southern California by the time she established her studio in Los Angeles in 1882. Known best for her complex, realistic, and academically formal compositions of roses, White was also a noted
landscape, mission, and portrait painter.

Born in Iowa, White and her Quaker family migrated to California via an ox-drawn cart when she
was four years old. They initially settled in a mining camp in the Sierra Nevadas in 1859 and
remained in Nevada County or San Francisco until 1868. White studied art at Mills Seminary
(now Mills College) and graduated in 1874. She continued her studies in San Francisco under
Virgil Williams before moving to Pasadena in the early 1880s.
Except for a year studying at the Art Students League in New York from 1892-93, White was
an active member of the Southern California arts community for decades. She exhibited
widely, particularly in the 1890s, and, in 1896, was a founding member of the Pasadena Art
Association.

White and her family were very close and deeply religious, and her parents encouraged her
to focus on painting while discouraging her from marrying or starting a family. White and
her parents were also active in the Theosophical Society, a 19th Century esoteric religious
movement, and moved to Pont Loma about 1902 to live in the Theosophical
community, Lomaland, that was led by noted Theosophist Katherine Tingley. For 28 years,
White taught painting at the Raja-Yoga School in the Lomaland settlement while producing
her work without commercial pressures (P. Trenton, Independent Spirits: Women
Painters of the American West,î 1890-1945, p. 44).

White returned to Northern California in 1930 and settled in Berkeley. She had a studio and
also taught there until she died in 1946.

Visual: Overall good condition. Areas of very fine, stable craquelure throughout. A soft stretcher bar crease along the upper edge. The canvas has been relined.

Blacklight: Occasional areas of touch-up scattered along the edges, the longest measuring 15" H x 1.5" W along the lower right edge. Small, scattered areas of touch-up in the flowers and table in the lower right quadrant.

Frame: 40" H x 34" W x 2" D Condition reports are offered as a courtesy and are typically published in Moran's catalogue or can be made available upon request. The absence of a condition report does not imply that an item is free from defects or restoration, nor does a reference to particular defects imply the absence of others. Buyers are responsible for determining to their own satisfaction the true nature and condition of any lot prior to bidding. Though buyers are not legally required to inspect lots prior to purchase, failure to do so may constitute a waiver of complaint that an item was not delivered in a condition equal to the existent condition at the auction.