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Lot description
Rachel Bentley (1894-1991) American, Original Watercolor. Signed bottom left. Depicts a California farm with mountains in the distance. Depth: 1 1/2 in. Overall size: 28 1/4 X 22 1/2 in. Sight size: 21 X 14 in. #1529 . Rachel Bentley was born in June 1894 in Stoughton, Wisconsin. When her family moved to Menlo Park, she married and raised five children at her permanent residence there. After they had all left home, she began to pursue watercolors, eventually gaining statewide recognition in 1954 when 100 of her paintings of one-and two-room country schoolhouses were exhibited at the California State Fair. Her efforts to travel around the country to paint and preserve little red schoolhouses that were being replaced by larger, more organized institutions led to the National Park Service registering many of them as historical landmarks. Eventually, with sponsorship by the Ford Times travel magazine, her subjects expanded to include stagecoach stops, mining camps, lighthouses, seacoast cottages, rustic barns and farmhouses, and old churches. In 1957 she was commissioned to paint over 50 views of early Menlo Park and Atherton, working from photographs. 25 of the watercolor paintings remain in the Menlo Park civic center as a permanent exhibit. She died in May 1991. Location BF