National Academy Museum

Self-portrait, 1943

Upon becoming an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1942, Hildreth Meière was asked to provide a self-portrait. In a biographical sketch that she later wrote, Meière explained:

I am an associate of the National Academy and never expect to be anything else, as I never exhibit paintings. All I have to show are sketches for murals, battered cartoons and photographs of finished commissions.1

Meière depicted herself as a muralist by placing herself in front of a ladder and a mural that showed the enormous scale of her work. The hands of the painted figures behind her are larger than Meière’s own head in the self-portrait.