Elizabeth Moaney in Profile with a Basket of Fruit
1930
Oil on canvas
30” x 25”
This portrait of Copperville resident Elizabeth Moaney represents another attractive woman who is blessed with a sense of confidence and has boundaries. As with Gertrude Stein’s character in Three Lives, the stunning, smart, and defiant Melanctha Herbert works as a housekeeper, but is not to be crossed. Mrs. Moaney sits with assertive straightness in her chair. She is clearly a self-possessed, handsome woman with a fine profile and a strong physique. Although the basket of fruit and Moaney’s simple dress suggest that she is a domestic worker, she is ennobled with an intensity of focus that extends outside the limitations of the picture plane, allowing the viewer to see beyond her occupation. The artist Ruth Starr Rose wrote of the admiration she and Elizabeth Moaney felt for each other. They were happy to be associated. As Rose wrote colloquially:
I know that Elizabeth Moaney is very proud to be living with ‘the quality’—but not nearly as proud as I am to have her there.