Female Portrait Head
Elizabeth Murray
1858
Medium
Pastel on gray wove paper
Dimensions
50.6 × 35.5 cm (19 15/16 × 14 in.)
Classification
chalk
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
114075
About the Artist
Elizabeth Murray
Elizabeth Murray (1940–2007) was a pioneering American painter whose exuberant, sculptural canvases redefined the boundaries of abstraction in the late 20th century. Born on September 6, 1940, in Chicago to Irish-Catholic parents—a lawyer father and a mother who aspired to commercial art—she showed an early passion for drawing cartoons, nurtured by her mother's encouragement and high school art te...