Portrait of Biala, nee Janice Tworkov

(123)
1924
Provincetown, MA
Oil on canvas
30 x 25 in. (76.2 x 63.5 cm)
Signed top left: "E W Dickinson"
Janice Tworkov Brustlein
Photo: Bruce White

Notes

Painted in Provincetown, MA. 1925; February 13, Janice left. In the portrait there is a rose behind her head and also what appears to be a "clouded" glass beaker. A curve of something rises from the rose, to the right. Her chair is not visible being draped with grey cloth, and she is posed in front of a window. Close study reveals the mullions, but each pane is covered so as to let in no light. The sitter was the sister of artist Jack Tworkov and both were life-long close friends of ED. She came to Provincetown in the 1920s and later became the wife of writer, Ford Madox Ford. After his death in 1939 [?] she married artist Daniel Brustlein, who was the New Yorker cartoonist known as "Alain." Janice's painting signature is "Biala", the name of Polish town in which she was born, and both she and Alain are noted painters.

Provenance

Private collection
Anonymous loan to Princeton University
Janice Tworkov Brustlein
Private, Anonymous loan to the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University

Exhibition History

1927 Buffalo Fine Arts Academy: Paintings by Edwin H. [sic] Dickinson
1961 James Graham & Sons: Edwin Dickinson, Retrospective, as "Janice Biala"
1965 Whitney: Edwin Dickinson. Major retrospective, as "Portrait of Janice Biala"
2007 PAAM: Edwin Dickinson In Provincetown 1912-1937