Author Description

Claude Raguet Hirst (1855-1942)--born Claudine--was the only woman acclaimed for painting in the hyper-realistic style of still-life painting known as trompe l'oeil (literally, "fools the eye"), which flourished in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Hirst worked in both oil and watercolor, in intimate scale, displaying a dazzling aptitude for rendering the surfaces and textures of objects. This catalogue and its accompanying exhibition are the first devoted to Hirst's considerable achievements. They demonstrate the artist's transformation of still-life painting by the creation of works to appeal to both men and women, in contrast to her male colleagues who painted primarily for a male audience.