Shirely Marie Russell was an American Artist best known for her paintings, prints and still lifes of Hawaiian Florals. After the death of her husband she visited Hawaii with her son and decided to stay.
Around 1935-1936, the Japanese publisher Watanabe Shozaburo (1885–1962) published more than several woodblock prints she designed. The majority of these prints depict colorful and detailed tropical flowers.
The Hawaii State Art Museum, Honolulu Museum of Art, Isaacs Art Center, and Tokyo National Museum are among the public collections holding works by Shirley Russell.
Shirley Ximena Hopper Russell (1886-1985), also known as Shirley Marie Russell, was born in Del Rey, California. She studied art and modern language at Stanford University, graduating in 1907 (1908 according to some sources). In 1909, she married Lawrence Russell, an engineer. After the premature death of her husband in 1912, she began teaching in Palo Alto to support herself and her young son. In 1921, Russell and her son visited Hawaii and she decided to take up permanent residence there in 1923. Russell studied under the Hawaiian marine artist Lionel Walden during the 1920s. She also studied in New York, and traveled to Paris at least four times to further her art education, including an extended stay in the 1930s. In addition to a stint at the Académie Julian, her teachers in Paris included André Lhote. Her 1927 trip to Paris resulted in one of her paintings beings exhibited there in the Spring Salon.
In the mid-1930s, Russell traveled to the Far East, visiting at least Japan and China. While in Tokyo, it appears that she made contact with the Japanese woodblock print publisher Watanabe Shozaburo, who would publish a number of prints that she designed in the 1935-1936 time period. Russell's introduction to Watanabe came through Charles W. Bartlett, who had worked with Watanabe in the teens and twenties. Since only 12 of Russell's approximately 16 woodblock prints are listed in one of Watanabe's notebooks, Russell may have hired Watanabe to create some additional prints on some subsequent visit to Tokyo, or she may have commissioned them long distance from Hawaii, as most of Bartlett's post-WWI prints had been.
The majority of Russell's prints are tropical botanicals viewed so close up they are nearly abstracts.
