Painter

Elsie Driggs

Elsie Driggs was an American Precisionist painter known for austere factory scenes, industrial geometry, and later experiments with watercolor and pastel.

Elsie Driggs quick facts

Driggs studied the shapes of Pittsburgh steel mills before painting her best-known Precisionist canvas, then explored watercolor and pastel in later work.

Elsie Driggs quick facts
Full name	Elsie Driggs
Born	1898 · Hartford, Connecticut, United States
Died	1992 · New York City, United States
Nationality	American
Movements	Precisionism; later American modernism
Paint types	Oil Paint · Watercolor Paint
Other media	Pastel drawing · charcoal drawing · collage
Other materials	—
Painting surfaces	Canvas · Paper
Painting methods	Prepared graphite studies and later made watercolor collages and oil-pastel combinations, including pastel layered over an oil underpainting
Common subjects	Steel mills, factory chimneys, industrial landscapes, plants, flowers, figures, and abstract organic forms
Notable works	Pittsburgh · Study for Pittsburgh · Leaves · Woman Tree

Sources: Whitney: Pittsburgh, oil on canvas, Whitney: Study for Pittsburgh, graphite on paper, The Met: Garden on Cedar Road, watercolor on paper, National Gallery of Art: Woman Tree, watercolor, Smithsonian Archives of American Art: Elsie Driggs interview, and Whitney Museum: Leaves.

Paint types used by Elsie Driggs

Driggs rendered industrial structures in measured oil paintings and later explored watercolor on paper, sometimes with drawn or collage elements.

Oil paint

Pittsburgh (1927) is oil on canvas. Driggs based its gray palette and monumental mill forms on studies of the steelworks she had seen as a child. The painting converts an industrial landscape into a carefully ordered composition, documenting oil in her best-known Precisionist work.
Watercolor

The National Gallery records Woman Tree as watercolor on wove paper, documenting Driggs’s later work in a more fluid medium. Her watercolors and drawings reveal a different scale and handling from the oil painting Pittsburgh. The collection record identifies both the paint and support for this separate practice.

Sources: Whitney: Pittsburgh; National Gallery of Art: Woman Tree.; The Met: Garden on Cedar Road, watercolor; Smithsonian Archives of American Art: Elsie Driggs oral history

Painting surfaces used by Elsie Driggs

Collection records document canvas and paper in Elsie Driggs’s practice, and each row links a support to a named object and its recorded materials.

Canvas

Driggs’s Pittsburgh and other industrial landscapes are documented on canvas. The textile support carries her carefully ordered oil compositions, in which factories and structures become sharply defined forms. Museum records distinguish these finished paintings from the graphite studies and watercolors she made on paper.
Paper

Her works on paper include graphite studies and watercolors, such as Garden on Cedar Road and the National Gallery’s Woman Tree. The paper support serves both drawing and painted studies, distinct from the large canvas used for Pittsburgh. Collection records directly identify these sheet works.