Elizabeth Charleston was a San Francisco native known for her impressionist flower and landscape paintings. Charleston began painting at the age of 50, while recovering from an automobile accident.

Life and work

Elizabeth Charleston was born in San Francisco, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 in 1910, shortly after the devastating San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. She attended the Katherine Delmar Burke School

Katherine Delmar Burke School

Katherine Delmar Burke School, also called Burke's, is an independent girls' school for kindergarten through eighth grade. It was founded in 1908 by Katherine Delmar Burke and was originally named Miss Burke's School. Burke's is located in San Francisco, California near Lincoln Park...

 and lived the life of a wealthy San Franciscan of the time. During her youth, she lived in France, and those memories later were reflected in her works. Her family was closely connected with the San Francisco Bay Area arts community.

At the age of 50, Charleston was in an automobile accident which limited her activities and mobility. She began painting for the first time while recovering.

The San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Chronicle

thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

's late art critic Alfred Frankenstein

Alfred Frankenstein

Alfred Victor Frankenstein was an art and music critic, author and professional musician.He was the long-time art and music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle...

 reviewed her showing at the Pomeroy Gallery in 1968, and said Charleston had a "wonderful eye" for flowers -- "totally charming, decorative and delectable." Most of her works were impressionist oil paintings of flowers and the French countryside. Her works are available widely today, and have been shown in numerous museums and galleries in the US, Brussels, and Paris, including Hammer Galleries in NY (at least four one-woman exhibitions at Armand Hammer

Armand Hammer

Armand Hammer was an American business tycoon most closely associated with Occidental Petroleum, a company he ran for decades, though he was known as well as for his art collection, his philanthropy, and for his close ties to the Soviet Union.Thanks to business interests around the world and his...

's famed galleries), Frank H. Boos Gallery in Bloomfield MI, Conacher Galleries in San Francisco, Salon des Femmes Peintres in Paris in 1974, the Salon exhibition at Société des Artistes Français

Société des artistes français

The Société des Artistes Français is the association of French painters and sculptors established in 1881. Its annual exhibition is called the Salon....

 in 1973, the US Embassy in Brussels, and at the Nationale des Beaux Arts Exposition du Tricentenaire in 1973.

Charleston is listed in Clara, the National Museum of Women in the Arts' database of women in the Arts. Charleston is popular with San Francisco Bay Area collectors, including Laura King Pfaff (chairman of Bonhams

Bonhams

Bonhams is a privately owned British auction house founded in 1793. It is the third largest auctioneer after Sotheby's and Christie's, and conducts around 700 auctions per year. It has 700 employees....

 & Butterfields, the world's third largest auction house).

Charleston died on April 8, 1997 in San Rafael, California

San Rafael, California

San Rafael is a city and the county seat of Marin County, California, United States. The city is located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area...

, near San Francisco.