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.
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Famous quotes containing the words declining and/or years:
“Because it often happens that an old family, with traditions that are entirely practical, sober and bourgeois, undergoes in its declining days a kind of artistic transfiguration.”
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—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 23:10,11.