Mabel Dwight

Primarily a printmaker, Mabel Dwight created images that established her as a noted satirist of contemporary American life. Born Mabel Jacque Williamson, Dwight emerged as an artist relatively late in life. She spent her youth in New Orleans and California and began her studies in 1897 at San Francisco's Mark Hopkins Institute of Art (now the San Francisco Art Institute); she then traveled extensively in Egypt, Ceylon, India, and Java. In 1903 she settled into the New York City neighborhood of Greenwich Village, a bohemian enclave of artists, writers, and intellectuals. Dwight married social realist painter and printmaker Eugene Higgins (1874—1958) in 1906 and spent much of the next decade actively championing left-wing politics and her husband's art. The couple separated in 1917, and the following year she became the secretary for Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's newly established Studio Club, an organization for promoting modern American art that evolved into the present-day Whitney Museum of American Art. She also participated in its life drawing sessions, annual exhibitions, and artist community. Following her divorce from Higgins in 1921, she adopted the name Dwight; its origin is unknown.

In 1926-27, Dwight lived in Paris, where she made her first lithographs at the Atelier Duchâtel. Her first solo exhibition, featuring recent prints and drawings, took place at the Weyhe Gallery in New York in 1928. Lithography became Dwight's primary medium; she would make 111 editioned lithographs in the course of her career. In her scenes of ordinary life, she compassionately parodied the foibles of fellow Americans, particularly New Yorkers. She also created images critical of Fascism and injustice. During the depression, she produced many prints under the auspices of federal artists' relief projects. By that time, Dwight had found support from both private collectors and museums. Her artistic activity waned with her declining health after 1941. Dwight spent her last years writing her autobiography, which was never published.  (https://collection.terraamericanart.org/people/25/mabel-dwight)

“Born Mabel Jacque Williamson in Cincinnati, Ohio, an only child, she used different birth dates and changed her name to her husband's when she married. In 1921, about four years after her 1917 divorce from Higgins, she changed her name to Dwight, a name she apparently made up.” (She stated both 1875 and 1876 were her birth year.) Source: Journal Article/Review: [Untitled] / Reviewed Works: Mabel Dwight: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Lithographs by Susan Barnes Robinson, ...Review by: Phyllis Peet, Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Autumn, 1999 - Winter, 2000), pp. 52-55. (https://doi.org/10.2307/1358988)