Boy with Violin
November 10, 2013
Marie Snell was a Detroit-based artist (b. 1924) whose work employed multiple media, including glass-blowing, collage, and painting. Snell attended Wayne State University and the University of Michigan, where she obtained her B.D. degree before studying painting at the Society for Arts and Crafts (now the College for Creative Studies) for seven years. Boy with Violin (c. 1950) is an oil painting that the artist did, most likely while she was enrolled at the Society for Arts and Crafts. While the work is figurative and aims to be visually representative of the sitter, it also imparts on the viewer an insight into his emotional and psychological identity. The way in which the gaze of the sitter is rendered, weary and direct, conveys all the information a viewer requires to discern who he is.