Dixie Selden was born on February 28, 1868 in Cincinnati, Ohio. When she was two years old, her family moved across the Ohio River to Covington, Kentucky. Selden resided in Covington with her parents until their death in 1909. She then returned to Cincinnati in 1910 where she lived until her death on November 14, 1935.

Selden attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati beginning in 1884. Her instructors included Vincent Nowottny, Henrietta Wilson, Lewis Cass Lutz, Fernand Harvey Lungren, and L.H. Meakin. When the artist Frank Duveneck (1848-1919) returned to Cincinnati after painting in Europe, Selden attended his painting classes in 1890, 1891, and 1903.

Selden’s early style was significantly influenced by Duveneck’s teaching, and she adopted his so-called Munich style as her own during her formative years. Selden soon perfected her skill as a portraitist, and in 1894 at age 26 she advertised her occupation as a portrait painter, thereby officially announcing herself as a professional painter and owner of a viable commercial business.

Although Selden made her livelihood by painting portraits of Cincinnati’s elite society, she reserved the summer and fall months for traveling and painting landscapes. She often went to Europe, always traveling with a coterie of Cincinnati friends and cousins. She also visited China, Japan, Mexico, Canada, the Middle East, and northern Africa, including Egypt. Her strongest and perhaps most popular work was produced in the 1920s in Brittany, Venice, and Spain.

Village street scenes and harbors were favorite subjects, and occasionally Selden painted portraits of local citizens dressed in festival costume. At the end of each trip, she returned with approximately twenty to thirty paintings of various sizes: small thumb-nail oil sketches, small paintings completed over two days (20 x 16 in.), and larger, more fully executed works (20 x 30 in.).

Selden’s style significantly changed in 1913 after attending a summer study course with William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) in Venice, Italy. With Chase’s encouragement, she adopted a colorful Impressionist palette and painting technique, a style that contemporaries equated with her cheerful and endearing personality.

Throughout Selden’s life, her paintings sold well and were widely exhibited at notable institutions including the National Academy of Design, Art Institute of Chicago, Detroit Institute of Arts, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and Cincinnati Art Museum. Many of her best works remain in private collections but several notable paintings are at the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Art Museum.

For a definitive history and catalogue raisonne see Genetta McLean, Dixie Selden: An American Impressionist from Cincinnati, 1868-1935, Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Galleries, 2001.

Source: Genetta McLean, Dixie Selden: An American Impressionist from Cincinnati, 1868-1935, Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Galleries, 2001.

Studied

1884-90 at Art Academy of Cincinnati with Duveneck; with William Chase in Venice, Italy; in Great Brittain with H.B. Snell

Member

Cincinnati Women’s AC (president); NAWPS; Cincinnati MacDowell Society; NAC; Chicago Gal. Assn; SSAL; Louisville AA

Exhibited

Cincinnati AM, annuals (frequently), three-person show (with Annie Sykes and Emma Mendenhall), 1910; Cincinnati Woman’s AC; Corcoran Gal biennials, 1914-23; PAFA Ann., 1915-16, 1919-23, 1927-30; AIC; NAWPS, 1929

Work

Cincinnati Art Museum; Univ. Kentucky Art Museum; Cincinnati Public Schools Collection; Cincinnati Mus. Center

Resources

WW33; Jones and Weber, The Kentucky Painter from the Frontier Era to the Great War; American Art Review, vol. 10 (April 1998); Cincinnati Painters of the Golden Age, 98-100; Falk, Exh. Record Series