American Monotypes from the Baker/Pisano Collection | Page 22

Virginia Berresford (American, 1904–1995)
Flower, 1933

Monotype, 4 1/4 x 3 5/8 in.
Collection of The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, New York. Gift of
the Baker/Pisano Collection, 2001.9.19

Little known today, Virginia Berresford was a well-trained
artist. In 1921 Berresford attended Wellesley College, and in
1923, Columbia University Teacher’s College. She studied with
George Bridgeman at the Art Students League of New York
and privately in Paris between 1925 and 1930. Whether landscape or portraiture, her work can be described as cool realism:
spare and elegantly composed. Her monotypes were, at one
time, dated to only one year, 1933, and mainly small, somewhat
emotionally derived renditions of flowers—unusual and unique.
But it appears she returned to making monotypes about the
time she moved to Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard in 1950,
where she opened an art gallery and where she lived for the rest
of her life.
NOTES:
For biographical information, see Berresford, Virginia’s Journal.
Stavitsky, “Reordering Reality,” 29.

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