MELA MUTER MARIA MELANIA MUTERMILCH 1876-1967 WATERCOLOR ON PAPER. Mela Muter \ Maria Melania Mutermilch (1876 - 1967)" Port in Collioure" watercolour on heavy paper, 26.5in by 19 1/4in. Signed lower left MUTER. PROVENANCE: the artist's legacy collection NY. Muter was born into an affluent Jewish family assimilated in Poland. Throughout its history, the family had remained loyal to the tradition of Polish independence , however, Muter spent most of her life abroad, primarily in France. She maintained loose contacts with Polish artists in Paris, who were part of the cole de Paris international circle, though she did exhibit with them (e.g. at the Galerie du Mule Crillon).She attended a yearlong course at Milosz Kotarbizski's Drawing and Painting School for Women in Warsaw. In 1901 she departed for Paris. Years later this would turn out to be a permanent resettlement, and Muter accepted French citizen in 1927. Once she was there she attended classes at the Academie Colarossi and the Academie de la Grande Chaumire, though her studying was rather irregular as she was a young mother at the time. Generally, in an academic sense, she was self-taught. In 1902 she began to present her works at the annual Parisian Salons; she also sent works to be exhibited at a number of domestic group exhibitions (held in Krakow, Lvov, and Warsaw). A series of solo exhibitions began with a presentation at Barcelona's Galeria Jose Dalmau in 1912, and she became a member of the Parisian Societ Nationale des Beaux-Arts the same year. She painted a great deal and presented her work often in Paris, less regularly in Munich and Pittsburgh. She had important solo exhibitions at the Charon Gallery (1918) and Druet Gallery (1926 and 1928) in Paris, and in Poland at the Towarzystwo Zachaty Sztuk Pieknych / Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts (1923).Her personality was shaped by broad and direct contacts with members of the Parisian artistic and intellectual elite. The painter's acquaintances included Paris-based Polish artists and authors like Leopold Gottlieb, Wasaw Reymont, Leopold Staff, Stefan Aeromski, and Henri Barbusse, Artur Honneger, Auguste Peret (who designed the artist's home), Diego Rivera, Romain Rolland, and finally Rainer Maria Rilke, who became friends with Muter towards the end of his life. The artist painted portraits of many of these individuals, including Staff, Zeromski, and Jan Kasprowicz. Two men with whom she shared strong emotional ties played important parts in her life. They were Michal Mutermilch, an aesthetician and Parisian correspondent for the Polish press to whom she was married between 1899 and 1922 (though they actually parted in 1914), and Raymond Lefebvre, a Socialist activist who died tragically in the USSR in 1920. The painter's brother, Zygmunt Klingsland, was a well-known art critic.Muter was influenced most strongly as an artist by her numerous travels, particularly her many plein-airs in Brittany and Spain. Affected by