Irma Seitz

In pendant portraits of William and Irma Seitz, seen here on either side of the doorway, the sitters’ twin postures suggest a sense of intimacy as they turn toward each other. This portrait reveals a prior composition underneath; the painting began in a horizontal orientation, and the sketched outlines of a chair and a bouquet of lavender flowers remain visible. A painter herself, Irma was a careful steward of her husband’s legacy and a generous philanthropist. Following his death in 1974, she donated works from their collection to many museums, some of which are on view in this gallery, and endowed the Irma S. Seitz Prize in the Field of Modern Art, awarded yearly to a Princeton senior in acknowledgement of their contribution to scholarship on Modern art.