Rebecca Salsbury James (1891-1968) – Happy Home: Bowl of Vegetables
This luminous depiction of root vegetables piled into a bowl showcases Rebecca Salsbury James’s signature style: exacting, hard-edged, and flat. It was among the top acquisitions at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2024. A resident of Taos, New Mexico (living not far from her close friend Georgia O’Keeffe), James focused on reverse glass painting, a challenging medium explored by a number of modernists, although none mastered it to the same extent as James. Happy Home: Bowl of Vegetables is one of her largest and most elaborate works, and demonstrates her precise technique of layering color in pristine compositions.