Margaret Hicks (1923 - 2006), Framed Oil on Board, Dog Portrait (American).
 
Margaret Talbert Hicks (American, 1923-2006), original oil painting on board depicting a terrier-type dog in profile, wearing a collar. The dog is centrally positioned against a dark, subtly textured background, emphasizing its alert posture and expressive features. Signed by the artist at lower right. Presented in an ornate gilt frame.
 
Born in Philadelphia in 1923, Margaret Talbert Hicks graduated from Temple University, and then taught in Philadelphia elementary schools.  She followed her Army Officer husband to his overseas assignments, studying art in Germany, teaching in American schools abroad and tutoring soldiers. When the family settled in Washington, D.C., she taught school for a year and then became a full-time artist. 

Hicks specialised in miniature paintings of representational subjects, such as landscapes, still lifes and occasional portraits, painting mostly from life with small watercolor brushes and a magnifying glass, on finely woven canvases or wooden panels measuring 2 to 4 inches wide. Her paintings and other artwork were shown in exhibitions and galleries in Washington and Baltimore, London, Japan and the U.S. Embassy in Gambia.  She authored a book about small-scale painting, sculpture and engraving entitled 'Art in Miniature'. 
 
After becoming a full-time artist in 1967, she was also active in art organisations, serving as president of the Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers Society of Washington, and of the American Art League in Washington, and as an active member of Arts for Aging, the Miniature Art Society of Washington, the Arts Club of Washington and other arts and civic groups. 

In 2004, she helped organize an international exhibition of miniature art at the Smithsonian Institution's S. Dillon Ripley Center, which included several of her own paintings among the more than 500 works on view at the exhibition. 

She died at the age of 83 on August 3, 2006, in Washington, DC. 
 
CONDITION:
 
Wear commensurate with age. Crackled patina to canvas (see photos).