1944

Painted Three-Fold Screen with Watercolor Sketches, 1937-1942

American (born Russia), 1899 - 1972

Eugène Berman came to prominence in the early 1930s when his visionary, neo-Romantic landscapes were first shown in New York. In 1937 Berman met his future wife, the Hollywood film star Ona Munson, who is best remembered today for her role as the buxom madam Belle Watling in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind. Over the next five years Berman made hundreds of drawings, watercolors, and paintings of the flamboyant actress. In 1944 he incorporated several of these images in these folding screens, which he later donated to the museum in memory of his wife, who tragically died of an overdose in 1955.