As the end of the century approaches, it becomes increasingly obvious that the standard histories of twentieth-century American art are in need of revision. Reputations that once seemed incontrovertibly major now appear meager, while so-called minor talents are beginning to look substantial, or, at least, more interesting than was once supposed. (This is assuming, of course, that artists are to be judged by their art rather than by extra-aesthetic criteria.) And while the myth of the great lost artist is largely that, there are, undoubtedly, fine painters and sculptors who have not yet met with serious appraisal and are unknown to the general public, as well as to those who make art their vocation.

Such may be the case with Florine Stettheimer (1871–1944). I first encountered Stettheimer’s paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, about four years ago, while meandering through a survey of twentieth-century American painting cobbled together from the museum’s holdings. Her Cathedral paintings, four works that take as their subject the social and cultural life of New York City from the late Twenties to the early Forties, took me by surprise. While the artist’s name was vaguely familiar, the paintings were new to me and curious. Their idiosyncrasies recalled folk art, but the Cathedral paintings were decidedly not the work of an “outsider”: their humor betrayed an artistic temperament as sophisticated as it was acerbic. I found the Cathedral paintings funny and diverting—diverting enough to make me wonder what else Stettheimer had accomplished.

Since