Janet Scudder (Primary Title)
Man Ray, American, 1890 - 1976 (Artist)
The American expatriate sculptor Janet Scudder (1869–1940) was born Netta Deweze Frazee Scudder in Terre Haute, Indiana. She changed her name to Janet at age eighteen, after enrolling at the Cincinnati Art Academy. Scudder moved to Paris in 1894 and established her reputation as a master of graceful garden sculpture, which often featured charming cherubs, playful pipe-playing pans, and glistening water nymphs. A close friend of Gertrude Stein, who gave her the nickname “doughboy” (slang for an American soldier during World War I), Scudder was a tireless advocate for women’s suffrage and gender equality in the arts. In Man Ray’s portrait, she appears confident and sophisticated, wearing a fashionable cloche hat and a string of pearls around her neck while dangling a lit cigarette in her right hand against a modern textile design by French artist Raoul Dufy.
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