Ruth Cobb, at 93; paintings evoked a dreamlike state

Growing up in Dorchester, Ruth (Cobb) Kupferman would ride the subway after school to take classes at the Museum of Fine Arts, "doing math and French homework along the way," she would tell her family. She never dreamed that one day her art would be exhibited in the MFA and other prestigious museums and galleries.

She worked mainly in watercolors and acrylics, and over 60 years turned out countless works that critics described as "luminous" and "dreamlike." She chose to sign her art with her maiden name and used it professionally to distinguish herself from her artist husband, Lawrence Kupferman, who inscribed his work with just his surname, according to their son, David of Newton, also an artist.

Ms. Cobb, whose work was exhibited in a 2003 retrospective at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center, died of congestive heart failure Jan. 10 at Lasell House at Lasell Village in Newton. She was 93.

Art historian Francine Koslow Miller of Andover said in an essay to accompany the Brandeis exhibit that Ms. Cobb's art could aptly be described as intimiste, the French word often associated with the mood of late 19th-century paintings by two of Ms. Cobb's favorite artists, Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard. The term, which evokes a middle-class life characterized by intimate, cozy domesticity, also aptly describes Ms. Cobb's delicate and subtle interiors, Miller wrote.

"Her watercolor and acrylic paintings combine a dreamlike world of memory with truth to nature," she added. "The objects Cobb sets up as motifs include all kinds of ceramics, glass, wood, plants, and fabrics as well as cherished family heirlooms: her mother's pickle jar, pleated curtains, and meat grinder; her grandmother's Bavarian glass candy dish and bottle; and her own ceramic bowls, tea sets, and vintage clothing."

"Ruth was a superb watercolorist," Miller said in a phone interview. "Her work had a transcendent quality. . . . She could capture light and memory. Still life was her medium. If she were going to the beach with her kids, she would take her watercolors with her."

Miller quoted Edgar J. Driscoll, a former Glober art critic, as saying Ms. Cobb's paintings "offer an abiding faith that all's well with the world."

Ms. Cobb was born in Boston to Charles and Bessie (Cohen) Cobb. After graduating from Dorchester High School for Girls in 1931, she entered Massachusetts College of Art and graduated in 1935. While there, she met Lawrence Kupferman, another art student. They were married in 1937.

Ms. Cobb said that as an art student she was inspired by the Oriental collection at the MFA.

"The sure-handed economy of means and the exquisite transparencies still fill me with awe," she said in a 1979 article in American Artist magazine.

She also was influenced by the work of her husband. "Although his work, usually abstract, is very different from mine, there is a liquid flow and continuum underlying everything that gives a quality of depth within a flat picture plane," she said.

She told her children that her work with the art project of the federal Work Projects Administration allowed them to afford an apartment.

Another big stimulus in Ms. Cobb's art development occurred when she and her husband started to spend summers in Provincetown, said their son. There, David said in an e-mail, his parents were part of an art colony that included such names as Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb and William Baziotes.

In 1958, David said, his parents bought a Victorian house in Newton Center for $13,000. The house had enough light and room to accommodate a studio for each of the four Kupfermans. Two children had arrived. Nancy Blanchard of Newton, the couple's daughter, also an artist and now an art teacher at Newton Country Day School, said their mother was a stay-at-home mom.

"When my brother and I were both in kindergarten, she painted from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., when we came home from school," she said. But Ms. Cobb managed to produce one painting a week over a 40-year period, she added.

Their father was professor of painting and head of the painting department at MassArt for 29 years before retiring in 1969. He died in 1982 at 73.

Ms. Cobb lived on her own in her Newton Center home until about six years ago, said her sister, Adele Garr also of Newton.

In addition to the MFA, museums that have some of Ms. Cobb's work in their collections include the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and the Worcester Art Museum. Her work has been part of group exhibitions at places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the American Watercolor Society in New York, her son said. Her work has been part of group exhibitions in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Watercolor Society, her son said.

Ms. Cobb has received awards from the American Watercolor Society of New York, the New England Watercolor Society of Boston, and the Audubon Society of New York.

"Mother sold most everything she did," her daughter said. "I think she was sort of a breakthrough artist because so few women artists were getting attention in her day. Yet, she was a very modest woman without pretensions."

In addition to her son, daughter, and sister, Ms. Cobb leaves two grandchildren.

Services have been held.