Painted in 1922, this is a portrait of an artist by an artist. Alice Hügy (often cataloged as Alice Hugy), a Swiss-born, Saint Paul–based painter and commercial illustrator, is remembered for helping make room for art through teaching, exhibiting, and civic advocacy, including a fight to protect green space at Cherokee Park. Fellow American artist Clara Mairs, then in her mid-forties and active as an organizer in local art circles, renders Hügy with modernist clarity like simplified planes, cool light, and no sentimental softening. A pared-down room and posture suggest this is a studio pause for an image of concentration and professional self-possession. She is a light-skinned woman sitting in a quiet room, her posture upright and composed. She faces forward, meeting our gaze through wire-rim glasses that slightly magnify her brown eyes. Her grayish brown hair is parted and swept back and frames her forehead and left ear. Her face is built from broad planes of cool grays, pinks, and warm tans plus flushed cheeks and lips a muted coral so Hügy is solid and present rather than softly modeled. She wears a dark, loose dress with a pale collar and warm rust-red trim that drops in two vertical bands (held by her right hand) and circles the cuffs. Behind her, an interior tilts into view including a framed picture at left, a shadowed chair back (which she relaxes her left arm behind), and a pale hanging curtain at right. Brushwork stays restrained and matte, letting geometry and light do the work of describing her steady gaze, firm jawline, and a stillness that feels deliberate. The overall palette is cool and hushed slate, bone, and smoke with small, confident accents of red that draw the eye back to her Hügy. Her expression is neutral but intent, brows slightly arched, as if weighing what to reveal. Nothing is overtly decorative as even the setting feels pared down to make her face with those glasses and that direct look become the painting’s true center of gravity.
"Portrait of Alice Hügy" by Clara Mairs (American) - Oil on canvas mounted on masonite / 1922 - Minnesota Historical Society (Saint Paul, Minnesota) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #ClaraMairs #Mairs #AliceHügy #AliceHugy #art #artText #MNHS #PortraitofaWoman #WomenPaintingWomen
