Artist: Jean Hannon

Eerdmans presents Jean Hannon: A Retrospective in Oil, Ink, & Watercolor, the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery. The solo show features over 30 pen and ink drawings, watercolor and oil paintings created over seven decades. Though subject and medium may vary, Hannon created each work with a consistent and enduring commitment to pursuing beauty, no matter the prevailing art world trends–a discipline Hannon maintains into her 93rd year.

The exhibition's earliest works date to the 1950s when Hannon moved to Paris after art school and received commissions from such varied clients as The Paris Review and haute decorateur Vincent Fourcade. Upon the recommendation of the legendary editor Diana Vreeland, who took an abiding interest in the young artist, Hannon had her first solo exhibition in 1960 at the Country Gallery in Locust Valley, followed by two shows at the prestigious Alexander Iolas Gallery in 1960 and 1961. Here she showed ink portraits of animals, including camels, ostriches, and lions often enlivened by colorwash, which were also sold by Pamela Churchill Hayward (later Harriman) at the New York outpost of Jansen. Richly hued and patterned oil paintings of interior still-lifes and mysterious floral watercolors en grisaille characterize the artist's more recent work.