LILLIAN COTTON
"PORTRAIT OF MARLENE DIETRICH"
OIL ON CANVAS, SIGNED
AMERICAN, C.1930S
40 X 30 INCHES

Lillian Cotton
1901-1962
Cotton was born in New York City on April 1, 1901.
Cotton was an American artist known for her portraits, especially of high-society figures and well-known actors, writers, and artists of her day.
Cotton was a student at the Andre Lhote Academy in Paris, and the Art Students League with Robert Henri and George Bellows.
She was a member of National Association of Women Artists, New York Society of Women Artists, and the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
She exhibited at the National Association of Women Artists in 1946, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1930 the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1930, the Paris Salon, the National Academy of Design and the New York Society of Women Artists.
 
From Wikipedia:
Cotton was most famous for her portraits, with subjects including Greta Garbo, Lauren Bacall, Veronica Lake, June Walker, Marcel Marceau, Stephen James Joyce, Alfred Lunt, and Wheeler Williams. Cotton’s paintings are characterized by realistic forms, clear colors, and bold brushwork. Although she primarily painted human figures, she also occasionally painted landscapes and still-lifes.
Between 1918 and 1959, Cotton exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Salon d'Automne, among other institutions. She was also a member of the New York Society of Women Artists[10] and the Société Nationales de Beaux-Arts, maintaining a lifelong connection to both her American and French artistic “roots.”
Lillian Cotton pieces are represented in the permanent collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and of Florida State College and Seton Hall University. The painter occasionally signed her works LC Impey, though she is better known as an artist as Lillian Cotton. She is listed in Who Was Who in American Art (Falk, 1999) and the Dictionary of Women Artists (Petteys, 1985). Lillian Cotton died in New York City in 1962.