PALM BEACH ESTATE FIND! Fashion designer and multi-talented artist Ron Fritts created these trapunto fabric assemblages for dear friends and family. This large portrait of England’s Princess Alexandra, longtime consort of Queen Elizabeth, is a colorful combination of cut and sewn silk fabrics as well as hand painted details like face and hands, giving this piece a wonderful dimensionality and depth. The work is much larger and way more detailed than any other examples I have seen, befitting royalty!
Overall measurements are 33” x 45” framed
The piece measures 24” x 35.5 within the frame.
Condition overall excellent.
Princess Alexandra (baptised Alexandra Helen Elizabeth Olga Christabel) is the second child and only daughter of the late Duke and Duchess of Kent. Her father, who was brother to King George VI, was killed in a wartime flying accident in 1942 when Princess Alexandra was just five years old. Her brothers are the present Duke of Kent and Prince Michael of Kent. The Princess is cousin to The Queen.
Ronald Fritts has led a life motivated by the creative impulse. He was always making things, drawing and having to produce Art. He won several art awards during public school years. He attended: Carnegie Institute to study fine art; Columbia University where he received a BFA in theater arts; The Cooper Union in New York to study painting; the U. of Cincinnati where he received a painting fellowship and was awarded an MFA. He was a visual merchandising designer in New York; founded RF Studios, Inc. for national distribution of art and concurrently maintained a Madison Ave gallery for his art and designs. A continuing creative instinct eventually led him into the fashion world and the gallery became the Fritts Collection where his fashions were well received along with his art. The gallery lasted twenty five years with two other locations in Manhattan. He discontinued national distribution in order to focus attention on fashion while developing his painting in a studio in Pa. In addition to these business ventures, Ron was a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York for 37 years.