Elizabeth Osborne

Philadelphia-based artist Elizabeth Osborne trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s.  She was awarded multiple fellowships for European travel from PAFA, followed by a Fulbright Fellowship to study in Paris in the 1960s. After these formative experiences, Osborne returned to Philadelphia to teach at at PAFA, where she served as the first full-time female faculty member there since Cecilia Beaux and Violet Oakley at the turn of the 20th century.

 

Osborne showed her work for several decades at Marian Locks Gallery in Philadelphia beginning in the 1970s and Fischbach Gallery in New York in the 1980s. Here, she became known for working with watercolors to produce light-filled landscapes with rich colorism and exacting precision. Traveling to cities across the U.S. and beyond, Osborne captured the unique atmospheric effects and geography of each different location, as in Hibiscus Bermuda III and Dana Island.

 

Osborne’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA); Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Philadelphia, PA); Woodmere Art Museum (Philadelphia, PA); The State Museum of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, PA); James A. Michener Museum of Art (Doylestown, PA); Delaware Art Museum (Wilmington, DE); Minneapolis Institute of Art (MN); Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University (Hamilton, NY); George Washington University (Washington, DC); The Print Club of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA); American Re-Insurance (NY); AT&T (NY); Brown, Wood, Ivey, Mitchell, and Petty (NY); Chase Manhattan Bank (NY); Chemical Bank (NY); CIGNA (Philadelphia); Commerce Bancshares, Inc. (Kansas City, MO); Dechert, Price and Rhoads (Philadelphia, PA); Duane, Morris, and Heckscher (Philadelphia, PA); First Pennsylvania Bank (Philadelphia, PA); Pittsburgh Plate Glass (Pittsburgh, PA); Provident National Bank, (Philadelphia, PA); Rahr-West Museum (Manitowoc, WI); Reading Public Museum (Reading, PA); Shaw, Pittman, Potts, and Trowbridge (NY); Simpson Thacher, Bartlett (NY); UniDynamics Corporation (Stamford, CT); and Westinghouse Corporation (NY).