LOÏS MAILOU JONES (1905 - 1998)
La Butte, Montmartre, Paris.

Oil on linen canvas, 1950. 546x648 mm; 21½x25½ inches. Signed, dated and inscribed "©" and "Montmartre" in oil, lower right recto. Signed, titled and inscribed "Exhibited 22nd Biennial, Corcoran" in ink on the stretcher bars, verso.

Provenance: collection of the artist, Washington, DC; the estate of the artist; private collection, Florida.

Exhibited: Twenty-Second Corcoran Biennial of Contemporary American Oil Paintings, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, April 1 - May 16, 1951, with the labels on the stretcher bars; Explorations in the City of Life: African-American Artists in Paris, 1945-65, the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, January 18 - June 2, 1996, with the label on the back board.

Illustrated: Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Explorations in the City of Life: African-American Artists in Paris, 1945-65, p. 49, pl. 3.

This street scene on the hill of Montmartre is a superb example of Loïs Mailou Jones's Paris oeuvre. Jones, who first lived in Paris from 1937-38, returned there frequently after World War II. She often painted Parisian street scenes en plein air with her active Impressionist brushwork. These street scenes were important subjects for her, and she continued to produce them through the mid-1960s. Conwill pp. 46-47.