Provenance
Estate of Jay Friedline
Private Collection, Massachusetts

Artist Biography
Helen Stein (1888-1965)

The artist was born Helen Steinberg in Odessa, Russia. She arrived in New York when a young child. She began her artistic training at the Art Students League where she studied with, among others, the modernist, Max Weber. She continued her training at the Cooper Union in New York City and later moved to Paris where she seems to have emersed herself in the abstract and modern techniques which had captured that artistic city in the beginning of the twentieth century. Upon her return to America she was residing in New York but spending an increasing amount of time in Gloucester, Massachusetts where she became part of its modern art fabric. She was living in that community through the 1930's when other American Modernists, Hans Hoffman, Adolf Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Milton Avery, to name a few, called Cape Ann their home.

Helen was extremely close to Marsden Hartley who lived in Gloucester in the 30's. According to Hartley's biographer, Townsend Ludington, "he had friends, none closer than Helen Stein, whom he knew from his time in Gloucester. She was part of a group of painters with whom he was...friendly-and when not friendly, of whom he was jealous." Very often Stein and Hartley painted together throughout the Cape Ann area. The Cape Ann Historical Society owns a portrait of Marsden Hartley painted by Helen Stein. The painting has been reproduced for a publication concerning Cape Ann artists.

Helen was married to fellow Gloucester artist, Ernest Thurn. The couple continued to live in Gloucester and New York throughout their married life.

Much biographical information may be gleaned from Helen Stein papers donated to the Smithsonian Institution by her (and Hartley's) friend and fellow painter, Jay Friedline. Included in these papers are Helen's letters to and from Hartley.