Virginia Berresford American, 1902-1995

Virginia Berresford was an underrated American modernist who had no instantly recognizable style. In the1970s, someone complained that one of her calligraphic paintings was “not like you.” “I get that comment so often,” Berresford replied. “People want the same style. They don’t realize that an artist wants to experiment, to change, to grow.” The ongoing variety of Berresford’s approaches and techniques held her back commercially but led to the creation of a stimulating oeuvre that continues to fascinate in the twenty-first century.

Virginia Berresford was born in New Rochelle, NY. She studied at Wellesley College [MA] in 1921 and then at Teachers College (Columbia University) in 1923 with Charles J. Martin, a U.S. modernist. While at Columbia she took drawing classes with George Bridgman, the long-time instructor at the Art Students League of New York. She inherited a little money and studied at the Académie Moderne in Paris with Amedée Ozenfant from 1925 to 1930. Ozenfant was a founder of purism, a type of modernism that emphasized flat areas of color with no shading. Berresford became his disciple, painting primarily in earth tones because she accepted Ozenfant’s thesis that bright colors were fleeting and had no lasting value.

After marrying Ben Thielen, a writer, Berresford returned to New York to live. She renewed her relationship with Ozenfant, who was now teaching at the New School. She passed the summers in Martha’s Vineyard, MA and the winters in Key West, FL. In Florida, Berresford began to break from Ozenfant’s influence. She adopted a less severe style, using free brush strokes and vibrant colors. “Bright colors might not be ‘lasting’,” she declared, “but they gave a lot of pleasure while they last.”

For the last 50 years of her career, Berresford experimented with a variety of styles and approaches—landscape, figurative, and abstract--in both oil and watercolor, without the slightest concern for artistic fashion. For a while, she was influenced by magic realism. Around 1950, she experimented with ‘circus net’ multi-media paintings on bone board using cloth/netting as a kind of stencil. Then she became captivated by Ireland, painting green landscapes suffused with hazy and mysterious light. At age 80 she was fiddling with the effects of Elmer’s glue and paint. “I believe an artist should try different styles to see what really appeals,” she once said.

Living in Martha’s Vineyard enthralled Berresford; she said she “couldn’t live anywhere else.” She gloried in the ocean environment and painted a number of seascapes and ‘shell pictures.’ Berresford opened the first commercial art gallery in Martha’s Vineyard in the early 1950s and it was popular for more than 25 years.

In 1989 Berresford published an autobiography, Virginia’s Journal: An Autobiography of the Artist. The book chronicled her life and travels and also contained an excellent summary of her methods and goals as an artist. Ultimately, regardless of technique or system, she declared, “I think of my painting as a bridge between the viewer and my experiences, thoughts, and emotional reactions...”

Solo exhibitions of Berresford's work were held by The New Gallery, NYC; Montross Gallery, Walker Gallery, NYC; Mortimer Levitt Gallery, NYC; Berresford Gallery, Massachusetts; Princeton Gallery of Fine Arts, Jacques Seligman Gallery, NYC; Marie Sterner Gallery; Bodley Gallery; Dunbarton Gallery; Bonestall Gallery, Farnsworth Art Museum, Wellesley College; Menemsha Gallery; Studio West Art Gallery; College of St. Thomas; Princeton Gallery of Fine Art; and several others in Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey and New York.

Selected works have been acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art, Detroit Museum, Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Dallas Museum of Art, and dozens of private collections.