Lily Harmon (American, 1912-1998)
Harmon studied at the Yale School of Fine Arts, the Académie Colarossi in Paris, and the Art Students League of New York. She often sketched people going about their daily lives, but also studied textile design where she learned about pattern, color, line, and abstraction. By the 1930s, she employed a Social Realist style to tender portraits of relatives and artist friends like painter Helen Frankenthaler. Harmon illustrated books by Andre Gide, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Edith Wharton.
Harmon had a 50-year retrospective exhibition in 1982 organized by the Wichita Art Museum in Kansas. She was a professor of painting at the National Academy of Design from 1974 until her retirement. Harmon is represented in collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Jewish Museum in New York City, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC.
