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 WASHINGTON (AP) - Alice Neel specialized in painting 20th century American women and could do cute kids and attractive teenagers. She had more unusual interests, too: old ladies and pregnant young women.
One of the most striking of the older women is her mother, enveloped in a vivid plaid dressing gown and despondent at 86 with complications from a broken hip. Called "Last Sickness," the picture recalls that the artist nursed her mother through the end of her life.
Neel's self-portrait at the age of 81, three years before she died, features white hair, rimless glasses and pursed lips. Seated in a striped armchair, a paint rag in one hand and a brush in the other, she is nude.
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