Rose Naftulin, Self-Portrait

As a student, Rose had an inimitable way of putting on paint. I was amazed by the delicacy and luminosity in her work and (by) the fluidity with which she painted.

- Doris Staffel

This self-portrait is unusual in that only the suggestion of a face is present. The painting's impressionistic brushwork indicates her passion for French painting. Naftulin's watercolor of Long Beach Island hangs behind her. The artist once remarked, "The strange thing about this particular painting was that it looked like me yet I didn't paint my features.”

Born in Philadelphia, Naftulin briefly attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) before marrying at age nineteen. While raising three children, she continued taking classes at the Cheltenham Township Art Center, where she studied with Doris Staffel and Dennis Leon. She later took classes at the Barnes Foundation.