Jeanette, 1919

William Henry Cotton was a well known New York portrait artist and illustrator born in Newport, RI. He was a founding member of the National Association of Portrait Painters; a leading artist's organization whose members included many prominent artists of the early 20th century, such as John Singer Sargent, Phillip Hale, Robert Henri, George Bellows, and Frank Benson. This portrait was shown in the National Association of Portrait Painters' Annual Exhibition in 1919 at the Reinhardt Galleries in New York. It comes in the original frame and is accompanied by the original label from this exhibition.

Wikipedia Bio:
"Cotton was born in Newport, Rhode Island in 1880. He studied painting with Joseph DeCamp and Andreas Anderson at the Cowles Art School in Boston, and then at the Académie Julian in Paris with Jean-Paul Laurens. He was a founder of the National Association of Portrait Painters and a member of the Newport Art Association. Cotton exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York City, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Saint Louis Art Museum. He was also invited by the government of France to exhibit at the Musée du Luxembourg. In 1916, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician.

After a successful career as a portrait painter, he began working as a caricaturist for Vanity Fair in 1931 and for The New Yorker the following year. In 1931, the New York Repertory Company produced a comedy he wrote, "The Bride the Sun Shines On", at the Fulton Theatre in New York. He also painted mural decorations for New York City theaters, including the Capitol, Apollo, Times Square, and Selwyn theaters."