DIEGO RIVERA (1886-1957)

Portrait of Muriel Shirley Lipsey 

signed and dated ‘Diego Rivera 48’ (lower right) oil on canvas
47Ω x 31o in. (120.6 x 79.4 cm.)
Painted in 1948. 

$250,000-350,000

PROVENANCE

Acquired from the artist by the sitter.
Gift from the above.
Anon. sale, Christie’s, New York, 17 November 2009, lot 17. Acquired from the above by the present owner. 

Muriel Shirley Lipsey was married to Beverly Hills’s most famous furrier during the glamorous heyday of the 1930s and 40s, Abe Lipsey. A renowned hostess, Ms. Lipsey’s elegant parties and intimate soirèes gathered Hollywood’s elite such as Frank Sinatra, Kirk Douglas, Nat King Cole and many other silver screen luminaries. The Lipseys were also great patrons
 of the arts and dedicated philanthropists whose humanitarian concerns endeared them to many noble causes.

Painted by the great Diego Rivera, Ms. Lipsey’s portrait resembles Hollywood royalty. She is seated with poise on a plush velvet chair and is glamorously dressed in a fashionable fuchsia-colored gown wearing dazzling ruby and diamond clips and an extravagantly large diamond ring in her perfectly manicured left hand. Equally celebrated for his many superb compositions 

of Indian women at festivals or as fower sellers in markets such as the magnifcent Flower Festival: Feast of Santa Anita, 1931, Museum of Modern Art, New York—Rivera undertook with creative enthusiasm numerous society portraits such as the ones of Mexican society grande dame Natasha Gelman, flm stars María Felix, Silvia Pinal, and Paulette Goddard and the American socialite C.Z. Guest where his sitters are surrounded by exotic fowers and are transformed into iconic timeless beauties.