Late 19th-century artwork on display through December at North Shore Community Bank

A ruminative oil painting by Chicago artist Pauline Dohn Rudolph will be on exhibit at North Shore Community Bank, 567 Lincoln Ave., Winnetka, through December.

"The Seeker: I Sent My Soul Through the Invisible" (1897), will be on display courtesy of a donation by the M. Christine Schwartz Collection to the Winnetka Historical Society.

Rudolph, born in 1865, finished high school at 13 and began studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. She made history when she exhibited an oil painting in the Fine Arts Palace at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. "The Seeker" was exhibited in the Art Institute's 1899 annual show of Chicago artists, where it received a position of honor and drew strong reviews.

The Chicago Tribune acclaimed her as "one of the best-known of the women artists of the West" in 1901.

She and her husband, Franklin, purchased a home at 745 Sheridan Road, Winnetka, in 1907, where she lived until 1933. In failing health, she moved to California for the climate, but she died there in 1934 at 69 years old.

The painting was donated to the Winnetka Historical Society in 2021 by the M. Christine Schwartz Collection, whose aim is to preserve Chicago-area art and expand its audience. The Winnetka Historical Society also houses Rudolph's oil painting, "Portrait of a Young Woman in a Chinese Robe" (1901).