Florence Smithburn

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Florence Bartley Smithburn (October 16, 1904 – January 31, 1989) was an American painter and printmaker associated with Regionalism. She was born in New Augusta, Indiana (now part of Indianapolis) and finished high school there in 1922. She studied at the John Herron Art Institute and also took lessons at the Grand Central School of Art and the Art Students League of New York, learning from teachers such as William Forsyth, Paul Hadley, George Pearse Ennis, Richard Lahey, and Harry Sternberg.

Smithburn showed her work at the Hoosier Salon (1929–1930) and at the Indiana State Fair (1929–1934), winning prizes. She married physician Kenneth C. Smithburn on June 17, 1927, and moved to New York City in 1930. In 1937 she had a solo show at Argent Galleries. The couple later spent time in Africa, settling in Entebbe in 1938, where she painted local life for ten years while her husband did yellow fever research for the Rockefeller Institute. She also created maps for their scientific publications.

Although she rarely sold her paintings due to financial security, Smithburn’s work gained recognition. One lithograph, Untitled (Gust of Air From Subway Grate) (c. 1935), is held by the National Gallery of Art and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University. Her works are also in the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Georgia Museum of Art. She was a member of the Hoosier Salon, the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, and the Indiana Artists Association. She died in Indianapolis in 1989 at the age of 84.