Mabel Frazer "The Planting" & "Three Nuns Noses" Oils, ca. 1920
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GUEST:
These are paintings by my husband's great-aunt, Mabel Pearl Frazer, a Utah native artist. She taught at the University of Utah for 33 years in their art department.
APPRAISER:
She was a very prolific artist.
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
And what I found interesting about her is what I think we all find interesting about so many women who painted in the 20th century in America whose work is little known outside of their local regional areas.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
This tends to be because most women didn't have the same opportunities that men had to exhibit their work. She's a beautiful artist with an extraordinary color sense. And there are very, very modernist tendencies in her work.
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
The way she's kind of abandoned a realistic way of depicting something for these flattened kind of planes. This picture is almost surreal in some ways. It's highly dramatic. Given the interest there is increasingly in these women artists of this period, I would not be surprised to see an auction estimate of between $5,000 and $7,000 on the larger of the pictures, and perhaps $3,000 to $4,000 or $3,000 to $5,000 on this one.
GUEST:
Wow.
Appraisal Details
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