Dorr Bothwell

Orange Grove Landscape

1941

Doris Hodgson Bothwell, known as Dorr Bothwell, was born in San Francisco, in 1902. The Bothwell family moved to San Diego in 1911, where they became friends and neighbors with the artists Anna and Albert Valentien. 

Bothwell began her art studies with Anna in 1916 at the age of 14. In the early 1920s, Bothwell returned to San Francisco to study at the California School of Fine Arts, then studied at the University of Oregon in Eugene and the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design in San Francisco, in 1926. Returning to San Diego in 1931, Bothwell became involved, once more, with the San Diego art community and exhibited with the San Diego Moderns. 

In 1934, Bothwell was in Los Angeles and there she joined the post-Surrealist circle of Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg, finding some parallels between their post-Surrealist concepts and her own work. She attended classes conducted by Feitelson as part of the Public Works of Art Project from 1933–34 and eventually joined the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project as a painter in the mural division. She produced several murals for the WPA. 

In the 1940s and ‘50s, Bothwell taught at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. She died on September 24, 2000, in Fort Bragg, California.

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(Biography provided by Stevens Fine Art)