Mabel Lisle Ducasse

Mabel Lisle Ducasse was born in Laporte, Colorado and moved with her parents to Prosser, Wa. in 1908. In 1915-1916 she attended the Art Students League in New York where she studied with Frank Vincent Dumond, F. Luis Mora and George Bridgeman. She also attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1916. Beginning in 1917 she attended the University of Washington and received her BFA in 1923.

During this period, she became a part of Seattle’s nascent modern art scene, working with photographer Imogen Cunningham and painter Yasushi Tanaka, Seattle’s first abstract artist. She won several awards with the Seattle Fine Arts Society, precursor to the Seattle Art Museum. She also developed a close friendship with writer/activist Anna Louise Strong who became the subject of several pastel portraits by Ducasse.

Mabel Lisle Ducasse was noted for her work in the medium of pastel, selecting still-life subjects as well as figurative compositions of women in domestic activities. She has received three posthumous retrospectives and her work is in the Permanent Collection of the RISD Museum of Art; The Denver Art Museum; Brown University; The Wolfsonian, Florida International University, Miami, Florida.

[source: AskArt.com]