Description:Portrait in watercolor, head and shoulders, of subject age fifteen. She has dark hair and blue eyes and is wearing a blue dress with fine white ruffle detail.
History:Madame Elizabeth Shoumatoff was born in Kharkov, Russia in 1888 into an aristocratic tsarist family. She emigrated to the United States in 1917 and eventually settled on Long Island. President Roosevelt was sitting for her at his Warm Springs, Georgia ""Little White House"" when he suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945.
Notes:In 1942 subject's family was living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They had a country house at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier, Pennsylvania about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh. Madame Shoumatoff was known in Pittsburgh both socially and as a portrait painter. Her brother, Dr. Andrey Avinoff was director of the Carnegie Museum.
