Declining Years
During World War II Dix took a job with the Plas-Tex Corporation painting radium on airplane parts. During this time she suffered from exposure to radiation, which resulted in a small pension. Following this, she worked in a laundry, and joined the International Association of Machinists, drilling holes in airplane parts. She was justifiably proud of her part in helping the war effort, but her painting all but stopped. Despite this, she exhibited in the miniature division of the California Art Club.
Her last portrait commission, in 1951, was from Kaufman Thuma Keller, who at the time was Chairman of the Board of the Chrysler Corporation. However deteriorating eyesight meant she was unable to finish the painting.
In 1956, aged 78, Dix sold her possessions and moved to Lisbon, Portugal where in 1958 an exhibition spanning her life's work was held at Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga. It was her last exhibition, and newspapers in New York and Portugal carried articles.
Dix returned to the United States in 1961, moving in with her son and his wife in Woodbury, Connecticut. On June 14, 1961, the day before she was due to be moved to a care home, Eulabee Dix died. She was interred at Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.
Read more about this topic: Eulabee Dix
Famous quotes containing the words declining and/or years:
“Dandyism is the last flicker of heroism in decadent ages.... Dandyism is a setting sun; like the declining star, it is magnificent, without heat and full of melancholy. But alas! the rising tide of democracy, which spreads everywhere and reduces everything to the same level, is daily carrying away these last champions of human pride, and submerging, in the waters of oblivion, the last traces of these remarkable myrmidons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (18211867)
“Poor Poe! At first so forgotten that his grave went without a tomb-stone twenty-six years ... today in danger of becoming the life study of a few professors.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)