Anne Estelle Rice

The artist's estate and thence by descent

STRUCTURE The board is sound. PAINT SURFACE In good original condition with good impasto. ULTRAVIOLET UV light reveals a line of retouching across the lower right corner, also visible to the naked eye. FRAME Held in a simple painted plaster frame.
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Anne Estelle Rice was born to Irish-American parents in Conchohocken in Philadelphia in 1877 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in her home city and worked for a time as an illustrator for the North American and Saturday Evening Post, but it was her time in France in the early part of the twentieth century that her distinctive style developed. Rice first visited France in 1905 and it was during the period that followed that she met John Duncan Fergusson who was delighted by her beauty, intellect and talent. She became a member of the Societaire de Salon d'Automne a year later around the time that she held her first solo exhibition in London, at the Baillie Gallery. Kirsten Simister points out that "Rice's vivacious personality provided a good match for Fergusson. She shared his curiosity and love of adventure, breaking with social convention in order to accompany him to venues that were then considered unacceptable to women." In 1908 she received a commission from Wanamaker's Department store in Philadelphia. In William H. Gerdts's entitled The American Fauves: 1907-1918, he highlights that "Rice's decorations, installed in 1909, consisted of seven huge murals depicting figures in eighteenth century dress in an outdoor setting, but rendered in Fauve color, brushwork, and simplified form."

By 1911 Rice had become a regular and significant contributor to Fergusson's journal Rhythm and they became extremely important to one another, both romantically and professionally. Although their relationship did not last long (she married the critic Raymond Drey in 1913) and despite spending much of her time in London rather than Paris, the influence of Fergusson remained strong in her work. The Dancers at the Folies-Bergere was probably executed c.1910 "during her Parisian years under Fergusson's influence when she was still very much an American artist, Rice's own works...of circa 1910-11, constitute a major contribution to American Fauvism." (Gerdts, p. 32) Les Folies-Bergere, the famous Parisian music hall, was at the beating heart of fin de siecle society and proved a popular subject for artists and writers – most notably in Edouard Manet's painting  entitled A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. Off-centre composition, pioneered by Edgar Degas in paintings such as Dancers Practicing at the Barre (1876-7), The Ballet from Robert le Diable (1876) and Walter Sickert's The Gallery at the Old Bedford (c.1895) each provide significance influence to for Rice and can be seen clearly in the present work which is a highly important early work by arguably the most talented female member of the Scottish Colourists.