English: My attempt at photographing Brasz' charcoal portrait of Onya Latour. If you look closely, there are some tears in the sheet. I could try to fix it with tape on the backside, but something like that should probably be done by a proper restorer. The portrait is probably not worth the price...

But I like it. Onya La Tour (1896–1976) "had a close relationship with artist Arnold Franz Brasz [1888-1966], with whom she shared a studio in the Beechwood area of Hollywood, California. I like to contrast it with the photo of Onya that accompanies her Wikipedia entry.

I found it in a closet when, at the end of 2015, we moved to Seattle from a house built by my parents in 1962. I recognized the artist's name, as the same I had seen on an oil painting in my grandmother's apartment in the 1940's. I remember wondering why she had that painting, as it seemed to me not particularly good or interesting, though I was not yet ten years when she died in late 1949. It also hung in my parent's home, and I probably have it in storage somewhere. Splotchy sheep in a meadow, along with a barn. Lots of blue, which never made sense to me...

My grandmother, Ceta "Sheila" Bennett Munsey, b Tacoma WA abt 1888, lived with her son (my uncle) and daughter (my mother) in Hollywood for a period, probably the late 1920's and 1930's. She had divorced her husband in about 1917, when my mother was about 4 years. My grandmother was an aspiring actress, though she seems not to have had a remunerative acting career. The one part in which she spoke at all was a fainting scene in The Ape (though I've never been able to verify that). She seems to have had friends in the art world, though, as Harold Lloyd (as I recall being told) would have them to his home to play tennis. She and a Tacoma artist, Thomas Handforth, seem to have been close friends, as she left a collection of letters from him, and many prints by him.

My guess is that she must have had the LaTour portrait from time she lived in Hollywood until she died. I can only guess why Onya LaTour didn't keep it.

The date on the portrait is 1933