Gabrielle H. Feldman, 91, artist and illustrator

Gabrielle Hagert Feldman, 91, formerly of Jenkintown and West Mount Airy, an artist and illustrator, died Saturday, March 4, of failure to thrive at a senior residence in Bridgman, Mich.

Descended from a well-known Philadelphia family, she was the great-granddaughter of Henry Schell Hagert, a prominent district attorney and writer in the mid-19th century, after whom Hagert Street in Kensington and Schell Street in Bella Vista are named.

She grew up in a Center City home filled with the works of such artists as Thomas Eakins, James Wood, and Paul Martell. Some are now in museums.

The family moved to Jenkintown, where Mrs. Feldman graduated from Abington Senior High School. She lived in West Mount Airy for three decades.

Mrs. Feldman trained at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She left school early to take a job as a fashion illustrator for a local newspaper.

In 1949, she married Milton Feldman, with whom she reared five children in Mount Airy. While a mother and homemaker, she became a photographer, exhibiting her pictures in solo and group shows.

She cofounded a home business, Gertrude et Gabrielle, producing hand-painted clothing for sale in stores in Philadelphia, Manhattan, Paris, and Beverly Hills.

In the 1980s, after their children were grown, the Feldmans bought a 200-acre tree farm in Honesdale, 32 miles northeast of Scranton. Mrs. Feldman took up painting and drawing again, and was invited to enroll in the fine arts program at Marywood University in Scranton, from which she earned a master's degree.

A gifted draftswoman, she applied that skill to drawing, landscape, still life, portraiture, and narrative painting. From the 1980s on, she displayed her artwork at galleries and museums in northeastern Pennsylvania and in New York state, Michigan, and Illinois.

Her favorite subjects were opera, nature, the circus, and the performance arts. On a solo trip to India to research dance, she begrudgingly agreed to hire a tour guide when her daughters insisted on it. The guide lasted two days. "The only good tour guide is no tour guide," she wrote her daughters on a postcard.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Mrs. Feldman created a series of self-portraits in oils. She also explored narrative themes, including a landscape series of the four seasons, a biblical story series, and a still-life series including references to humorous faces and aerialists.

Her interests culminated in a circus series, a group of oils and large charcoal and pencil drawings based on her lifelong interest in the small circuses that traveled the rural circuit in Pennsylvania. The series drew on books, postcards, dolls, puppets, and windup toys, which informed her visual themes.

At age 90, after settling in Michigan to be near family, she had a show of her circus work at the Box Factory, an arts center in St. Joseph. "Many came and she was excited by it," said her daughter Martha Feldman. "The show was up all throughout the summer of 2015."

In addition to her daughter, Mrs. Feldman is survived by children Rebekah Boyer, Fred Feldman, Amy Tecosky-Feldman, and Rachel Nazareth; a brother; a sister; seven grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and special friend Shaya Jackson. Her husband, Milton Feldman, died in 1992.

Services will be private. A stone will be placed later at the Hagert family plot in Laurel Hill Cemetery in East Falls.

In her memory, the Feldman family would like to give away her many paintings and drawings in pen and ink, and charcoal, to those who appreciate art. Inquiries about the paintings and drawings should be made to marthafeldman39@gmail.com.