Edith Neff, Self-Portrait (Charcoal)

Self-Portrait was drawn in Neff's Kater Street studio following surgery for lung cancer; the marks under her shoulder indicate the scars from that surgery. This drawing was first shown in the 1996 memorial exhibition of her work held at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Edith Neff: Departures and Returns.

Woodmere owns an earlier charcoal nude self portrait by Neff, Self-Portrait While in a Cast for a Broken Leg, drawn in 1974 after the artist had been hit by a car outside the University of the Arts, at Broad and Pine Streets in Philadelphia. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections, among them those of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Delaware Art Museum, and the Minnesota Museum of American Art.