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Henrietta Shore: Western Progressive Modernist

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Henrietta Shore
1880-1963
Edward Weston
ca. 1927
Collection Center for Creative Photography
 
During the early years of the twentieth century, women modernists who were the most acclaimed artists were judged to have a "masculine" hand in their work. Directness, simplicity, and power--traits most prized in modernist abstraction--nearly always carried connotations of masculinity.[1] That gender stereotyping led to some women adopting male patterns of behavior such as wearing men's clothing and hairstyles in order to compete equally in a male-dominated genre.

At the time, there was a notion that women were perceived to have a uniquely feminine sensibility with special capacities to express themselves as Alfred Stieglitz explained, "Woman feels the world differently than man feels it. The woman receives the world through her womb. That is the seat of her deepest feeling. Mind comes second."[2] Obviously a man without a clue, but with a typical attitude for his era.

Henrietta Shore was irritated by the patronizing tendency of critics to see her work as conveying feminine sexuality rather than the intellectual, metaphysical themes she sought to express. She was, perhaps, the boldest and most experimental modernist among women artists in California before 1920.

Born in Toronto, Canada, Shore was encouraged in her artistic interests by hermother. She experienced a profound connection with nature at age 13 when she saw her reflection in a puddle with nature which surrounded her face. That event spurred Shore to paint. She studied in New York at the Art Students League with William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. Her fellow student there was Georgia O'Keeffe.

Shore's early training in New York encouraged both a traditional approach as well as a more contemporary take proposed by Henri that embraced a fresh consideration of subject matter. Her use of color and her direct emotional appeal reflect Henri's influence. Shore continued her studies at Heatherly's Art School in London where she was the only student of painter John Singer Sargent. During her twenties, her work was included in exhibitions in Toronto, Paris, London, and Liverpool. [3] She also traveled to Haarlem, Holland, Venice, and Madrid. By her mid-twenties, Shore was working as an art teacher in Toronto. She moved to the United States as a permanent resident in 1913 and became a citizen in 1921.

Henrietta Shore (Californian, 1880-1963), The Blue Slipper, c. 1915, oil on canvas, 32" x 36"

Henrietta Shore
The Blue Slipper
ca. 1915
Oil on canvas
32 x 36 inches

From 1913 until 1920, Shore lived in Los Angeles where she experimented with a number of styles. Her work was well-received by the critics, but she was reluctant to part with her early pieces and suffered from a lack of ability to promote her work. She returned to New York in 1920, where she explored and developed her modernist style. Shore and O'Keeffe exhibited together during here time in New York and critics were much more enthusiastic about Shore's efforts than that of O'Keeffe.


Henrietta Shore
ca. 1925
Oil on Canvas

During the late 1920s, Shore traveled to Mexico where she painted portraits of Jose Clemente Orozco and Jean Charlot. In 1927, she befriended Edward Weston who, some believe, influenced his photography.


Henrietta Shore
Jean Charlot
ca. 1927
Oil on canvas
LACMA



Henrietta Shore
Women of Oaxaca
ca. 1928
Oil on canvas

Henrietta Shore
ca. 1930
Untitled (Cypress Trees, Point Lobos)
Oil on canvas
30¼ x 26¼ inches

Shore's subjects included portraits, many done on commission, as well as flowers, cacti, animals, seashells, trees, and land forms. She worked from the literal to the imaginative as she created works that represented the idea of a subject rather than the traditional view of it such as the work above.

In 1936 and 1937, Shore was commissioned to create six murals for the Treasury Relief Art Project. Four were done for the post office at Santa Cruz and were concerned with the local industries of that region. Artichoke Pickers was place in Monterey, and Monterey Bay, 1880-1910 was located in the post office there.

Artichoke Pickers mural by Henrietta Shore, 1934; c California State Parks

Henrietta Shore
Artichoke Pickers
Mural
ca. 1934
California State Parks

Shore exhibited from about 1898 to the 1950s. She participated in solo-exhibitions in New York and California including the M. H. de Young Museum in San Francisco (1933) and the Carmel Art Association Gallery (1946, 1963). A partial list of where her works hung include the Royal Canadian Academy in Toronto, Panama-California International Exhibition, San Diego, New York Society of Women Artist, New York City, and in numerous shows of the Carmel Art Association. In 1986, the Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art organized the Henrietta Shore: A Retrospective Exhibition, 1900-1963. [4]

shoreretrospective

Henrietta Shore, A Retrospective Exhibition: 1900-1963
Essays by Roger Aikin and Richard Lorenz
Edited by Jo Farb Hernandez
1986 by the Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art.
 
____________________________________________
1. Patricia Trenton, Ed., Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, (Los Angeles: Autry Museum of Western Heritage in association with the University of California Press), 25-26.
2. Ibid.
3. Jeri L. Waxenberg Wolfson Collection, Women Artists in the Modernist Tradition, Henrietta Shore, http://jlwcollection.com/jlwcollection.com/Henrietta_Shore.html, (retrieved October 21, 2013).
4. Kovick, Phil and Marion Yoshick-Kovick, An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 279.

Sarah Ladd-Pioneering Portland Photographer

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By the turn of the twentieth-century, the visual arts became an established part of Pacific Northwest culture. Artists worked and lived there. The wealthy, whose money came from banking, law, timber, and railroads, began collecting European, Asian, and some American painting, prints, and sculpture. Artists and supporters began to form organizations to exhibit art, some of which was on loan and shown expressly for the purpose of enhancing the cultural sophistication of the community. Instruction in the arts became available. Early local magazines such as The Westerner and The Week-End, covered the arts and the visual arts. And, more important to this researcher, local female artists were featured in The Westerner magazine.

The 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition's exhibitions of international, national and local artists brought art to everyone. During this twenty-year time period, from 1890 until 1910, the expansion of railroad service to the Puget Sound region (Northern Pacific Railroad to Tacoma in 1885 and Great Northern Railroad to Seattle in 1893) and the discovery of gold in Alaska/Yukon,1896, resulted in a tremendous population boom. The influx into this stunning region brought artists (and people whose children would become artists), patrons, art appreciators, writers about art, and art educators.

File:SarahLadd-EarlyMorning.jpg
Sarah H. Ladd
Early Morning above Vancouver
 Published in Pacific Monthly, Volume 14 No 1, 1905
 

Sarah Hall Ladd (13 April 1860 – 30 March 1927) was an early 20th-century American pictorial and landscape photographer. Ladd was born Sarah L. Hall in Somerville, Massachusetts, the daughter of John Gill Hall and Sarah Cushing.Little is known about her childhood. In 1881, Ladd relocated to Portland with her new husband, Charles, the son of leading Portland businessman William S. Ladd. The couple settled in a home that overlooked the Willamette River and began a comfortable life together.

It is not known or documented precisely when Ladd developed an interest in photography, but sources claim she joined the Oregon Camera Club in September 1899, and, by early 1901, a number of her works were on exhibition in San Francisco. In 1903, New York photographer Alfred Stieglitz formed Photo-Secession, an early-20th century movement that strove to elevate photography as a fine art. The group never numbered more than 105 members and were from various cities across the United States. Sarah Hall Ladd, Gertrude Käsebier, Edward Steichen, Clarence H. White, and Lily E. White were included among the select membership.


Sarah H. Ladd
Columbia River
Early 1900s
In 1903, the adventurous Ladd and White began to take extended trips on the Columbia River on White’s custom-built houseboat, the Raysark, a vessel that contained a darkroom. Both women excelled at photography and became internationally known for their pictorialist-style landscapes of the Columbia Gorge filled with soft light, clouds and atmosphere. Their photographs illustrated travel brochures and magazines helping draw tourism to the area.  

featured image
Sarah H. Ladd
Submerged Forest
Early 1900s
Ladd took this photograph of the “submerged forest” on the Columbia River between 1902-1904. The remains of trees in the river are found 25 miles above Cascade Rapids. Most of this area is now submerged behind Bonneville Dam, 40 miles east of Portland. In those days, travel was a challenge as roads were not paved and the terrain was unfriendly to motorized vehicles.

By 1904, Ladd’s social and familial responsibilities kept her away from her photography. She was invaluable to her husband when he became part of the preparations for Portland’s 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition. In 1910, the Ladds moved to the town of Carlton, Oregon, after Charles became president of the Carlton Consolidated Lumber Company. In spite of these additional obligations, however, Ladd managed to exhibit fourteen photographs at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.



Ladd became a prominent member in the Christian Science movement beginning in 1911. After Ladd’s husband died in 1920, she moved to Carmel, California in late 1924 to join her long-time friend, Lily White. Ladd lived in Carmel for the rest of her life. She died there on March 30, 1927.

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Further reading:

James V. Hillegas, Oregon Historical Society, Oregon History Project, http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/index.cfm.

 Carole Glauber, “Eyes of the Earth: Lily White, Sarah Ladd, and the Oregon Camera Club,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 108:1 (Spring 2007), 34-69.

Richard L. Hill, “Science-Landslide Sleuths,” Oregonian May 15, 2002.

Jim E. O’Connor, “The Evolving Landscape of the Columbia River Gorge: Lewis and Clark and Cataclysms on the Columbia,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 105:3 (Fall 2004), 390-421.

Oregon Experience, The River they Saw, Photographer Profiles, http://ec2-50-18-136-176.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com/programs/oregonexperience/programs/16-The-River-They-Saw/slideshows/2






Mary Curtis Richardson: The Mary Cassatt of the West

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File:Mary Curtis Richardson - Portrait of Mary Blanche Hubbard.jpg
Portrait of Mary Blanche Hubbard
1889
Oil on canvas
 
Mary Curtis Richardson (1848-1931) was an impressionist painter and suffragette.

Late nineteenth-century women used  gender to their advantage and claimed the child portraiture genre for themselves. Richardson became one of San Francisco's most celebrated painters of children.

Her father, Lucien Curtis, headed overland to the gold fields of California in 1849, while in the following year, Mary, her sister Leila, and her mother traveled to California via the Isthmus of Panama to join her father. The family settled in San Francisco.

She married Thomas Richardson, a man in the lumber business, who relocated to San Francisco from Canada.

In 1866 Mary and her sister traveled back to New York City to study wood engraving at Cooper Union. When they returned to San Francisco the sisters opened a wood engraving business and by the 1870s, both she and her sisters established the first women-run engraving company in San Francisco. The company became the Women's Printing Union.

When she was fifty years old, Richardson embraced a second career. Convinced by family and friends to pursue painting, Richardson studied with William Sartain at the Art Students League in New York and won the Norman Dodge Prize of the National Academy of Design for the best painting by a woman artist in the United States. After those honors, Richardson received numerous commissions to paint members of San Francisco's elite society and their families. 
Joseph M. Bransten (Son of MJB Coffee Magnate)
Date Unknown
Oil on Canvas
Oakland Museum of California

Richardson's work was forthright and sensitive, but free of the over-sentimentalized style that was popular at that time. By the 1910s, she was known as the "Mary Cassatt of the West" and she was singled out as the most important portraitist in San Francisco by Charles Keeler, ranked with painters William Keith and Thomas Hill.

Mary Richardson exhibited her portraits and paintings of mothers and children at the San Francisco Art Association between 1895 and 1901; the Vickery, Atkins & Torrey Gallery, San Francisco, in 1909; and the National Academy of Design, New York City, in the late 1880s. She and her husband remained in San Francisco in a home they built for themselves in 1888.

Mary Curtis Richardson

The Sleeping Child
No Date
Oil on canvas

 The Sleeping Child was eventually acquired by the Legion of Honor.


Seated Child Holding a Rattle
No Date
Oil on Canvas

Bonhams San Francisco - Mother and Child
The Young Mother
No Date
Oil on canvas

The Young Mother won a silver medal at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.

Despite her success and her feminist tendencies, Richardson felt compelled to tell an interviewer: "I am not a woman with a career; I am just a worker."

Mary Curtis Richardson died on November first, 1931, at her home and art studio in Russian Hill.
__________________________________________
Further Reading and Sources
Ask Art: The Artist's Bluebook, http://www.askart.com/askart/r/mary_curtis_richardson/mary_curtis_richardson.aspx
American Gallery: Greatest American Painters,
http://americangallery.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/mary-curtis-richardson-1848-1931/
Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945
Artists of the American West, Volume I, Doris Ostrander Dawdy
"San Francisco Women who have Achieved Success,"Overland Monthly 44 (November 1904), 517

Ruth Reeves: Art in Fabric Instead of Paint

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[Ruth Reeves]
Ruth Reeves
ca. 1947
New York
Over this past year, we have explored painters, sculptors, and photographers. This post, I would like to introduce you to a textile designer who rightfully belongs in the category of Fine Art. Textiles are intimately related to us more so than painting and sculpture-we all wear clothing according to our tastes, climate, country, and ethnicity and, in some cases, our religion. Influenced by ancient civilizations and primitive peoples, Ruth Reeves felt that "The fabrics of our own time express our contemporary life both in actual motif, where fine contemporary forms seem feasible, and in feeling."

Ruth Marie Reeves (1892 - December 23, 1966) was a painter, an Art Deco textile designer, and an expert on Indian handicrafts. Her wall hangings were created for the children's room of the public library in Mount Vernon, New York; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England; and for the carpet at the Radio City Music Hall in New York.  In that project, she was commissioned by textile designer, Donald Deskey, to create a wall fabrics and "vast carpet that would cover the grand lobby, staircase, and three mezzanines---and be symbolic of theatrical activities. In a mosaic-like configuration, Reeves interwove strong geometric abstractions of musical instruments. The rhythmical patterns, with a colorful combination of geometrically shaped banjos, guitars, accordions, piano keys, saxophones, and harps, hover against clouds of bright orange and yellow in a deep blue sky.  . . .The result is an immense, jazzy carpet that is opulent and urbane. It is perfect for a public pleasure palace." [1]
 
Ruth Reeves
Carpet
ca. 1929
Radio City Music Hall Lobby, New York

Born in Southern California, Reeves attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York from 1910 to 1911, and returned to the West to attend the San Francisco School of Design in 1911-1913. Reeves won a scholarship to the Art Students League where she studied with Kenneth Hayes Miller during the years 1914 and 1915. She travelled to Paris and lived there from the years 1921-1928 where she studied with renowned Avant-garde artist Fernand Léger. Her designs displayed a modernist idiom and were influenced by artistic movements in France such as Cubism and other contemporary French styles.

Upon her return to New York, Reeves established herself in the artist's community and began to create hand-printed textiles. She joined the newly established American Union of Artists and Craftsmen which sponsored major exhibitions in 1930 and 1931 to promote modern American design. [2]

A commission to design fabrics for the period furniture retailer, W. & J. Sloan established Reeves' reputation as one of the foremost original designers in the field.
 
Ruth Reeves
American Scene
1930
Block Printed cotton
105 1/2 x 47 1/4 inches
Yale University
Art Gallery, John P. Axelrod Collection

In her design for American Scene, Reeves combined "imaginary rooms in a country house where her given textile would have meaning."[3] The American Scene pattern recalls eighteenth century textiles with repeating groups of picturesque figures, surrounded by arabesques or foliage however, this particular type of pattern was also typically used in Art Deco fabrics. She took an eclectic approach in her design and choice of fabrics she employed. She elevated simple materials such as billiard-table felt, Turkish toweling, homespun, and unbleached cotton as she glorified those fabrics in a variety of treatments. Reeves also referred to Cubism, Futurism, folk and tribal art for inspiration.

Reeves, like many of her contemporaries, embraced modernism which served to move design away from old-fashioned historical styles and create sleek, abstract forms appropriate for modern life. She was able to incorporate both modern and primitive in her designs that combined "old and new as a synthesis of primitive vitality and machine-age sophistication."[4]


Ruth Reeves
Design for a Child's Room
ca. 1930?
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Funded by a grant from the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C., Reeves traveled extensively in Guatemala in 1934 where she visited the most remote villages and studied traditional Mayan textiles. Her intention was to create a set of modern variations that were inspired, not copied, by native work. She collected costumes that became part of an exhibition along with her own Guatemalan-derived designs at Rockefeller Center in March of 1935. Simultaneously, Macy's opened a display of additional costumes from her collection as well as a selection of modern adaptations and accessories using Guatemalan motifs. [5]

Reeves was a perfectionist who refused to compromise her high design standards. She always believed that textile design belonged to the Fine Arts. She also held that it was important to acquire an 'artistic literacy,' a familiarity with art in all forms and histories. Good design, she wrote, "rings a wonderful bell inside me." [6]

Overlooking Kingston 2
Ruth Reeves
Overlooking Kingston (Hudson River Series)
ca. 1934
Linen
Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection

A woman of the world, after 1956, Reeves lived in India, where she served on the All-India Handicrafts Board. She died in New Delhi in 1966.
____________________________________
Sources
1. Christine Roussel, The Guide to the Art of Rockefeller Center ( ), 17.
2. On the AUDAC, see R.L. Leonard and Adolphe C. Glassgold, Modern American Design by the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen, intro. Mel Byars (1930; rpt. 1992)
3.Harry V. Anderson, "Contemporary American Designers," The Decorators Digest (Mar. 1935), 44. 
4. Reeves, "What Creative Design Means to Me," typescript ms., 3, in Ruth Reeves Papers, microfilm reel no. 3093, frame 59, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
5. Marian Wardle, ed., American Women Modernists: The Legacy of Robert Henri, 1910-1945, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 36.
6. Reeves, "Let's Not Be Timorous," Curtain and Drapery Department Magazine (Mar. 1946): 22; Reeves, "What Creative Design Means to Me," ms., 4-7; Anderson, "Contemporary American Designers," 58.

Happy Birthday, Women Out West! Meet Ruth Peabody-Painter, Sculptor, and Educator

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Thanks to all the readers of my blog-the first post was created one year ago on November 22, 2012. This has been an incredible journey of discovery. After I submitted my dissertation I thought, now what? I had been writing for two solid years, nearly every day, through weekends, holidays, vacations, and summers. The void after completing the program was immense, so I began to investigate other avenues in which to continue to grow.

I have learned so much from the research into the fifty female artists that have been profiled throughout this year, along with their remarkable lives and contributions both to society and to the art world. I have been influenced and inspired by them-talented women, all.


Ruth Peabody
Ruth Eaton Peabody
Laguna Beach Art Association Artist
(c) HurrellPhotos.com
Ruth Eaton Peabody was a painter who, along with her mother, artist Elanor Colburn, were California modernists in the early part of the twentieth century. Peabody was born in Highland Park, Illinois on March 30, 1893. She first studied sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago and was taught to paint as a child by her mother. The two women moved to Laguna Beach, California in 1924 and became active in the local art scene where, in addition to painting, Ruth sculpted fountains and memorial plaques along with teaching art.
 
Ruth Peabody
Boy and Dog
Fountain
ca. 1935
Laguna Beach, California
In her early works, Peabody focused on the figure and on still lifes. The Cook Book combines both these subjects in a carefully constructed composition. The woman looks pensive, perhaps pondering what to make for dinner.
 
Ruth Peabody
The Cook Book Oil on canvas, 1925
32 x 40 inches
Little Pig in New Mexico is created in a post-Impressionist style of lively broad brushwork and strong colors. The painting was perhaps inspired by a trip to New Mexico to which Peabody and her mother took in early summer, 1930. (Note the pueblo in the background). In the 1930s, Taos, Santa Fe, and the Southwest in became popular destinations for artists that sought fresh subject matter and discovered sweeping new vistas.


Ruth Peabody
Little Pig in New Mexico
ca. 1931
Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 in.

For years, Peabody designed figural compositions that were much like her mother's style, but in the 1930s, she explored Dynamic Symmetry and Cubism and her work went beyond the objective to Constructivist compositions.



Ruth Peabody
Laguna Beach
ca, 1930s
25x 20 inches
Oil
 
Peabody was an active member in the Laguna Beach Art Association, the California Art Club, and the San Diego Art Guild.  She received dozens of awards in Southern California between the years 1926-1937. Ruth Peabody died in Laguna on October 22, 1966.

Peabody's exhibitions include the Panama Pacific International Exposition, 1915, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1931, Art Institute of Chicago;  Oakland Art Gallery, 1932, Golden Gate International Exposition, 1939, San Diego Fine Arts Gallery, 1939, California State Fairs.

Works are held in the San Diego Museum, drinking fountain opposite the  Laguna Beach Art Gallery, Laguna Beach Art Association (portrait medallion of Anna Hills), Laguna Beach Humane Society (fountains), Anaheim High School, Hoag Memorial Hospital, and in Newport Beach.
 
_________________________________________________
Sources
California Art: http://www.californiaart.com/artist-peabody.html, retrieved 12.3.13
The Redfern Gallery: http://www.redferngallery.com/artistbio.php?at=RuthPeabody, Retrieved 12.4.13
The Orange County Register, article: Where the Art Is: Laguna Beach's Public Art Tour Day to highlight works found throughout the city, http://www.ocregister.com/articles/art-24966-city-public.html
, Retrieved 12.4.13
Patricia Trenton, ed., Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 100.
 

Margrethe Mather: Modernist Photographer

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EW_MMather_1914
Edward Weston, Margrethe Mather,
 ca. 1914, gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ
On March fourth of this year, Photography News wrote this about Margrethe Mather on the 125th anniversary of her birth in Los Angeles. " . . . . Margrethe Mather was a photographer who --through her exploration of light and form-- helped to transform photography into a modern art."
 
Despite her marvelous body of work, Margrethe Mather remains an enigmatic figure, best known for her association with Edward Weston . . . . However, many consider Mather to have been Weston's mentor and teacher. She shared with him her intuitive eye for composition and her innate sense of artistic style, "teaching him how to edit an image to its very essence."

Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston and Margrethe Mather 3, 1922
Imogen Cunningham
Margrethe Mather and Edward Weston
ca. 1922
Gelatin Silver Print
8 x 10 inches
Close companions for over a decade, Mather and photographer, Edward Weston, collaborated on many photographs. The photographers had a profound influence on each other and on the history of photography in the years just before and after the First World War, as photography swung back and forth between pictorialism and modernism. Mather, a photographer of considerable accomplishment who taught and learned from Weston, has unfortunately vanished into obscurity while his reputation has continued to flourish over time.

Collaboratively, Mather and Weston founded the Camera Pictorialists of Los Angeles in 1914 that became one of the most important camera clubs and exhibition venues in the country.

Lady in White
Margrethe Mather
Lady in White
ca. 1917
              Platinum print, 9 5/16 in. x 7 3/8 in.
 Collection SFMOMA
Mather's early work was in the Pictorialist style, beautifully photographed images, veiled in hazy, soft-focus effects, such as the above Lady in White, taken in 1917. Mather and Weston had begun to employ the distortion of shadows to intensify the drama of their images. In her 1918 photograph of a Chinese poet, Moon Kwan, Mather strategically placed the poet's figure and his shadow in broad spatial areas to produce spare, but arresting compositions, that were quite ahead of their time.
 
blue-voids:  Margrethe Mather - Player on the Yit-Kim, 1918
Margrethe Mather
Player on the Yit-Kim
ca. 1918
 
File:FlorenceDeshon.jpg
Margrethe Mather
Florence Deshon,(1894-1922) US motion picture actress.
ca. 1921
Bromide print, 9 1/2”x 7 1/2”. Paul J. Getty Museum, Los Angeles 
Margrethe Mather
Japanese Combs
ca. 1931
 
Mather, an artistic and political rebel and a liberated sexual woman, helped to turn Weston's work in a more experimental direction by introducing him to her circle of free-thinking artists, actors and theater people, and political activists. Although Weston appreciated by Mather's intellectual curiosity, and for a time was passionately in love with her, he was also frustrated with her lack of dependability and unpredictable nature. In 1921, Weston embarked on an affair with the Italian-born actress photographer, Tina Modotti. When they departed for Mexico in 1923, Weston entrusted his Glendale studio to Mather's care, however by 1925, she lost interest in sustaining the business and drifted back to her bohemian haunts on Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles. Mather continued to shoot photographs sporadically until the mid-1930s, when she appears to have turned her back on photography altogether.

Mather's photographs were more experimental than those being produced by her contemporaries. Margrethe Mather died on December 25, 1952.

Her work is featured in the book, Margrethe Mather & Edward Weston: A Passionate Collaboration (W.W. Norton & Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2001).
 
In the early 1950s, recalling the greatest influences on his career, Edward Weston declared that Margrethe Mather was "the first important person in my life."

________________________________________________
Sources
http://giam.typepad.com/analog_photography_at_its/2011/09/margrethe-mather-1885-1952.html, retrieved December 17, 2013.
Grace Glueck, Art In Review, Edward Weston and Margrethe Mather, A Passionate Collaboration, April 4, 2003, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/04/arts/art-in-review-edward-weston-and-margrethe-mather-a-passionate-collaboration.html, Retrieved December 17, 2013.
SFMOMA, http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/12772, Retrieved December 18, 2013
Margrethe Mather and Edward Weston: A Passionate Collaboration,http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/3aa/3aa602.htm, Retrieved December 18, 2013

Ila Mae McAfee: Taos Painter

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Ila McAfee Oil Painting A Chain Reaction Trouble on the Trail
Ila Mae McAfee
A Chain Reaction: Trouble on the Trail
Oil on Canvas
ca. N.D.
 36 x 48 inches 
Ila Mae McAfee was born in 1897, in the small ranching community of Sargents, in southwestern Colorado near Gunnison. Her artistic interest began early and centered upon horses, which she would draw as a child. After she graduated from Gunnison High School in 1916, McAfee spent time in Los Angeles at the West Lake School of Art and the Haz Art School (1917-1918).
McAfee received her Bachelor's degree in art from Western State College, but her formal art education was at the aforementioned Haz Studio School in Los Angeles and at the Art Institute of Chicago. She decided to study under muralist James E. McBurney from whom she had taken courses in Chicago. McBurney hired McAfee as his assistant until 1924, after which she traveled to New York to study at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League. While in New York, McAfee worked as an illustrator and a painter of miniatures and did illustrations for Blue Book, Ranch Romances and other magazines.

Ila Mae McAfee
Entrance to Spring
ca. N.D.
         Oil on canvas board
 16 x 20 inches
In 1926, McAfee returned to Colorado and married Elmer Page Turner, an artist she had met on her parent's Colorado ranch. She and Turner moved to Taos in 1928 to be a part of the burgeoning art movement of the region. There, they built White Horse Studio, which would serve as their studio and home until 1993.


Ila McAfee
New Mexico Desert
ca. 1930s,
Oil on board,
32 x 65 inches
 
 
Ila McAfee
Alert
ca. N. D.
Oil on canvas
20.25 x 28.25 inches
 
In Taos, McAfee painted landscapes and figures, but her specialty remained animals, specifically horses. She also worked as an illustrator of children's books. She worked on a number of murals, as well, though she was most famous during her lifetime for something entirely unrelated to her art; she owned a series of cats, all named Sanka, to whom she taught as many as seventy five tricks each.

 
Ila Mae McAfee
  Red Willows
    ca. N.D.
  Oil on canvas
  18 x 20 inches

In addition to over a thousand easel paintings, which are represented in numerous public and private collections, McAfee’s murals were placed in the post offices of Clifton, Texas, Cordell and Edmond, Oklahoma and Gunnison, Colorado, as well as in the public library of Greeley, Colorado. She was a  friend of the noted Western art collector, Lutcher Stark and painted fifteen portraits of Lutcher’s longhorns at "Shangri-La." She also received every award that could be won at the New Mexico State Fair professional juried show.
Ila McAfee Oil Painting Woman with Blanket
Ila Mae McAfee
Woman with Blanket
Oil on Panel
ca. 1950
8 x 10 inches


Ila McAfee Painting Horses in Rhythm
Ila Mae McAfee
Horses in Rhythm
Watercolor
ca. 1971
5  x 4 inches 

In Taos, she became known for her pueblo paintings and her depictions of horses and other animals as well as Native Americans, ranch scenes, and landscapes. During an interview for Southwestern Art 20, Rita Simmons asked about her first impressions of Taos. McAfee said, "[Taos] was so different then, the village was small and the Indians remained uninfluenced by the invaders. Once I asked one of them, "What did you call this country before the Europeans came?"'Ours,' he told me."

In 1981, she was voted Taos Artist of the Year.  In addition, she worked as a WPA artist, completing a number of commissions for post office locations such as Edmond, Oklahoma, and Clifton, Texas.

Ila Mae McAfee lived a long, productive life that spanned nearly the entire twentieth century. She moved to Pueblo, Colorado in 1993, where she died two years later, after leaving her beloved adobe home in Taos, New Mexico.


_______________________________
Sources:
Taos and Santa Fe Painters, http://www.ilamcafeepaintings.com/, Retrieved January 10, 2014
http://www.askart.com/askart/m/ila_mae_mcafee/ila_mae_mcafee.aspx, Retrieved January 10, 2014
Kovinick, Phil and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinik, An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, (Austin: University of Texas Press), 1998, 208.
Rita Simmons, "Ila McAfee,"Southwestern Art 20 (September 1990): 100.

Culture, Time, and Passion...The Fibres of Art

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WCCA Logo



Calling all Artists and Art Historians!


Warnborough College (my Alma mater) is holding its second annual Conference on the Artsin Canterbury, England this summer, beginning on the evening of August 18 through August 21, 2014. If you are able to attend, it promises to be a wonderful opportunity to meet and to collaborate with fellow art "folk."

Artists in all media, academics, archivists, historians, curators, guides, students, researchers, curriculum planners, policy makers, photographers, and professionals in the fields of media, education, arts, music, humanities, science, and social sciences, are encouraged to attend.

I am the Director of Round Table Discussions-please send me an abstract of your proposal for your paper. Hopefully, you will then present at the conference. I'll look for your abstracts at victoria@warnborough.edu

All additional information for the conference and submissions can be found at http://warnborough.org/

Join us for this exciting event!

 

Donna Noreen Schuster: Interested in Everything

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Donna Noreen Schuster
In the Garden
ca. N.D.



As the daughter of a Milwaukee cigar manufacturer, Donna Schuster had the family resources to study with the best painters in America. She attended the Art Institute of Chicago and, after graduation, the Boston Museum of Fine arts school. Schuster continued her education in art by accompanying noted artist William Merritt Chase on a painting tour of Belgium in the summer of 1912. As a result of her study, her work was strongly influenced by the Boston School and Impressionism as tempered by Chase.

Donna Noreen Schuster
Sleep
ca. N.D.
Upon her return to the United States, Schuster moved to California in 1913 where she once again studied with Chase in Carmel. She stayed in San Francisco during the fall of 1914 where she worked on a series of watercolor sketches of the construction of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. She earned a silver medal for watercolor there, which was shown at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art in 1914.

Donna Noreen Schuster
Tiger Lilies
ca. N.D.
During the 1920s and 1930s Schuster taught at the Otis Art Institute and was an organizer in the creation of several artists’ clubs and was a founder of The California Watercolor Society and a group that later became Women Painters of the West. Her subject matter included harbor scenes, landscapes, figure studies, and showed Cezanne's influence in her studies of water lilies in both oil and watercolor.  Indeed, her early works show the influence of Monet and Chase; however, after she studied with Stanton MacDonald-Wright, she later experimented with various modern idioms including Cubism and Abstract Expressionism.

Donna Noreen Schuster
Little Mother
ca. N.D.

Summers found Schuster at her small home in Laguna Beach where she spent her time painting and helped to establish the Laguna Beach Art Association. Her paintings recorded many areas of the Southern California landscape before it became the congested metropolis that it is, unfortunately, today.

During her early years, Schuster's art was exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the years 1914, 1917, 1920, 1927 and 1929. Later, in the 1930s, she had shows at the San Francisco Art Association, the New York Academy of Fine Art and the New York Water Color Society. In addition, Schuster exhibited with the California Watercolor Society from 1921 until the mid 1940's.

Tragically, in 1953, Schuster died, trapped inside her home as it was destroyed in a brush-fire.

Exhibitions:
Minnesota Artists, 1913 (gold medal); Blanchard Gallery (LA), 1914; LACMA, 1914, 1917, 1920, 1927, 1929; PPIE, 1915 (silver medal); Panama-Calif. Int'l Expo (San Diego), 1915 (silver medal); NW Exhibition (St Paul, MN), 1915 (silver medal); Calif. Art Club, 1915-33; SFAA, 1916; Woman’s Club (Hollywood), 1920, 1927; Calif. WC Society, 1921-42; Laguna Beach AA, 1924-30; LA County Fair, 1924, 1927; Friday Morning Club (LA), 1925; Ainslie Gallery (LA), 1926; Calif. State Fair, 1926; Bernay Gallery (LA), 1926; Artland Club (LA), 1927; Pasadena Art Inst., 1927; Ebell Club (LA), 1930; Artist’s Fiesta (LA), 1931; Palos Verdes Library, 1933; GGIE, 1939; Festival of Arts (Laguna Beach), 1949.

Collections:
LACMA; Downey (CA) Museum; Oakland Museum; Fleischer Museum (Scottsdale); Irvine (CA) Museum; Orange County (CA) Museum.

________________________________________________________
Sources
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
American Art Annual 1913-33; Who's Who in American Art 1936-56; Southern California Artists (Nancy Moure); California Impressionism (Wm. Gerdts & Will South); Plein Air Painters (Ruth Westphal); Art of California, May 1991; Art in California (R. L. Bernier, 1916); Los Angeles Times, 1-3-1954 (obituary).





Jessiejo Eckford: Dallas Native and Artist of Western Scenes

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JessieJo Eckford
Mosquito Fleet Galveston
ca. 1933
Woodblock print
Painter and woodcut artist Jessiejo Eckford was born November 25, 1895 in Dallas, Texas. Her unusual name is a combination of her mother's; Jessie, and her father's; Joseph, a local judge. She lived her entire, but relatively brief life of only forty-six years in Dallas, but traveled extensively to paint around the state of Texas. In addition, she created art in New Mexico; Mexico; Massachusetts; the Ozarks; New York; and internationally when she toured the world in the mid-1920s.

Eckford began her art training in Dallas at the Aunspaugh Art School and later studied with Hale W. Bolton and Frank Reaugh in Texas. She also trained in Los Angeles and in Gloucester, Massachusetts. In 1929, Eckford won $250 in the Edgar B. Davis Texas Wildflower Competition with her painting, Prickly Pear.


Texas:Early Texas Art - Regionalists, JESSIEJO (JESSIE JO) ECKFORD (American, 1895-1941). Birches onLake Carlos, 1929. Oil on panel. 10 x 13-1/2 inches (25.4...
JessieJo Eckford
Birches on Lake Carlos
ca. 1929
 Oil on panel
 10 x 13-1/2 inches 
Prior to 1930, Eckford painted primarily in oil, but after that year, she gravitated towards working with wood blocks and watercolors.

 
JessieJo Eckford
Monterey, Mexico
ca. 1920s
Watercolor on paper
 
In 1934, she had a one-person exhibition in Dallas at the Joseph Sartor Galleries. The names of her works reflect her interest in western scenes, particularly of Texas such as Bluebonnets; Garza Prairie; and Afternoon, West Texas. There was a certain element of expressive, romantic fantasy in her buildings and landscapes.

JessieJo Eckford
Uncle Ben
ca. 1934
  woodcut on paper
6 x 8 inches 
Group shows include the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; Print Club of Albany, New York; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; International Printmakers, Los Angeles, California; Washington Watercolor Club, Washington, D.C.; American Watercolor Society, New York City; Midwestern Artists, Kansas City, Missouri; and the Southern States Art League.

Eckford also exhibited in many Texas venues: the Witte Memorial Museum, San Antonio; Centennial Exposition, Dallas; Texas Fine Art Association, Austin; San Antonio Competitive Exhibition; Fort Worth Museum of Art; Dallas State Fair; and Dallas Women's Forum.

Jessiejo Eckford died in Dallas on December 5, 1941 after a long illness.

Eckford's work is in the collections of the Witte Memorial Museum, and the Elisbet Ney Museum, Austin, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.


____________________________________________________________
Sources
Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki Kovinick, An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, University of Texas Press, Austin.
University of North Texas Digital Library, Jess Edith Self, History of the Growth of Art Interest in Texas in the Last Two Decades. http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc75321/m1/42/, (retrieved February 17, 2014).



Julia Bracken Wendt: Sculptor with Feminist Sensibilities

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1871-1942



Notable American sculptor, Julia Bracken Wendt, was one of the few female artists ranked equally with their male counterparts during the first two decades of the Twentieth Century. Wendt was born in Apple River, Illinois, the twelfth of thirteen children in an Irish Catholic family. Following the death of her mother when she was only nine years old, she felt adrift within the family, so she ran away from home at age thirteen and was on her own.
By the time she was sixteen years old, she found work as a domestic servant for a woman who recognized her talent and drive, and paid to enroll her in the Chicago Art Institute. She studied with Lorado Taft for six years and by 1887, she became his studio and teaching assistant. Wendt earned an excellent reputation over the course of her career and was referred to as the "foremost woman sculptor of the west...whether men or women."

Julia Bracken Wendt
Music
ca. 1915
Bronze
8 7/8 x 7 1/4 inches
In 1893, during the Columbian Exposition she was one of several women sculptors nicknamed the "White Rabbits" who helped to produce some of the architectural sculpture that graced the exposition buildings. In addition, she was awarded a commission to produce Illinois Welcoming the Nations for the Fair. The work was later cast in bronze and unveiled at the Illinois State Capitol.

Wendt, who sculpted portraits, fountains, and bas-relief medallions in bronze, was not a modernist in artistic style, but she proclaimed her feminist sensibilities in her contribution to the Panama Pacific International Exposition held in San Francisco in 1915, and in San Diego in 1916. Wendt proved to be an exceptional artist and was the only woman to win a gold medal for her work.

It was Wendt who originated the idea of placing the sculptured figures that typified the attributes of woman in the Women's building of the exposition, and it was she who carried the project through to the finish. Wendt not only created the figures, she completed the work on her own. She supervised the installation and raised the statues to their pedestals when the workmen were confounded with the process. Wendt demonstrated her executive ability, creativity, and problem-solving skills with thoughtfulness and imagination. Sculpture is a demanding, physical, endeavor that requires much more strength than that of painting on paper or canvas.

After successfully pursuing her career for a number of years, Wendt married painter William Wendt and moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1906, where they became a highly prominent artist couple. Wendt taught at the Otis Art Institute and became a member of the National Sculpture Society.
Julia Bracken Wendt
National Women's Trade Union Seal
Pen and ink drawing on board
Manuscript Division
Gift of the National Women's Trade Union League
 
In 1911, she began a commission of an eleven-foot high, three-figure allegory group for the rotunda of the Los Angeles County Museum. Wendt chose to represent History, Science, and Art as draped goddesses with uplifted hands holding electrically lit globes.

 NHM Rotunda: Julia Bracken Wendt -- Three Muses (Science, History, and Art)
Julia Bracken Wendt
Three Muses (Science, History, and Art)
ca. 1911
Natural History Museum Rotunda


In 1913, she was commissioned by the government of Canada to create a King Edward Peace Memorial, which was installed at Saskatoon.


Julia Bracken Wendt's Studio
ca. 1915
Photographer unknown
Handwritten caption: CHRISTMAS GREETING FROM JULIA BRACKEN WENDT TO CHAS. F. LUMMIS

 
Julia and William had no children. Julia Bracken Wendt passed away in 1942

                                                   Julia and William in their Laguna Beach Studio



Lincoln the Lawyer
Julia Bracken Wendt
Lincoln the Lawyer
ca. 1926
Lincoln Park, Los Angeles, CA


Exhibitions: 
World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893
Annual Exhibition, Palette Club, AIC, 1895
Annual Exhibition of Works by Chicago Artists, AIC, 1899-1910 (9 times)
St Louis/Louisiana Purchase Exposition, 1904
Chicago Municipal League, 1905
Pan-California Expo, San Diego (CA), 1915
California Art Club, 1918
Solo exhibits with husband, AIC, 1909-21
National Sculpture Society, 1929
National Sculpture Society, Los Angeles (CA) Museum
Awards: 
Commission, "Illinois Welcoming the Nations" for Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1892
Commission, Exposition Park, Los Angeles (CA). Commission, Battle Monument, Missionary Ridge (TN)
Sculpture Prize, Chicago, 1898
Municipal Art League Prize, Chicago, 1905
Gold Medal, Pan-California Expo, San Diego (CA), 1915
Harrison Prize, Los Angeles (CA), 1918
Memberships: 
Chicago Society of Artists
Chicago Municipal Art League
Society of Western Artists
Los Angeles (CA) Fine Art Association
California Art Club, Los Angeles
NAC
Three Arts Club of Los Angeles (CA)
Laguna Beach Art Association
Collections: 
Los Angeles (CA) County Museum of Art       
____________________________________________________________
Sources:
Waggoner, "The art of J.B. Wendt,"Los Angeles Herald Sunday Magazine, March 27, 1910, p.1.
Edenhurst Gallery, Julia Bracken Wendt, http://www.edenhurstgallery.com/painting.php?id=1929, retrieved 2/21/14
Illinois Women Artist Project, Julia Bracken Wendt,http://iwa.bradley.edu/artists/JuliaWendt, retrieved 2/21/14
American Treasures of the Library of Congress,http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm167.html, retrieved 2/21/14
Yesterday and Tomorrow: California Women Artists, Sylvia Moore, ed. Midmarch Arts Press, New York, 1989.

Ruth Armer: From the Representational to the Abstract

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Ruth Armer
California Autumn
ca. n.d.
              oil on canvas        
30 1/8 in. x 38 1/8 in
SFMOMA
Ruth Armer was a painter, lithographer and teacher, whose work style ranged from her early, more representational work, to her later, more abstract art. Known today as one of San Francisco’s more profound abstractionists, many of her works feature desert scenes, giant sequoias, and her beloved city of San Francisco, among many additional California subjects. 
 
Ruth ArmerA New Dawn
ca. 1947
Oil on canvas
24 x 41 inches
 
#2
Ruth Armer
#2
ca. 1949
Oil on canvas

Ruth Armer was born in San Francisco on May 26, 1896, where she spent the majority of her career as an artist. Armer studied at the California School of Fine Arts from the years 1914-15 and 1918-19. In between, she studied at the Art Students League and School of Fine and Applied Art in New York, under noted artists/instructors George Bellows, Robert Henri, Kenneth Miller and Joan Sloan. During this time, her artistic career was greatly influenced by Leo Stein and Max Weber.
 
Armer became a painter of landscapes, musical themes, and figures in both oil and watercolor. During her career she worked as a commercial illustrator as well as a landscape and portrait artist.
After returning to California, she exhibited at Gumps San Francisco, the San Francisco Art Association and the San Francisco Women Artist Annuals, as well as galleries in New York, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Portland, and Honolulu. Armer taught drawing, painting, and design in addition to children's Saturday classes at the California School of Fine Arts from 1933-1940. She served for many years on their Board of Directors. 
 
Armer participated in two competitive exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and was invited twice to show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
 
 
Ruth Armer
#328,
ca. 1958
oil on canvas
41 7/8 in. x 28 in.
Collection SFMOMA, Anonymous gift;
 
Armer's work during the 1940s could be considered a visual diary, recording the phases of her life and her responses to historical events. Her paintings during the war years had a tendency to be dark, composed of ragged shapes that recall the later work of Clyfford Still. After 1945, Armer's palette brightened, reflecting the confidence of the postwar era.
 
From the early 1940s until the early 1970s, Armer was a trustee of the CSFA and remembered the school generously in her will. In her later years she created small, abstract paintings of "orbs and illusions of vast spaces that fragment into energized squiggles, leaf patterns, and paisleys." Harvey Jones of the Oakland Museum of Art felt that Armer's work represented  the "post-Surrealism" movement of the 30s and 40s, founded by artists Helen Lundeberg and husband Lorser Feitelson. Jones felt that her artwork during that time led to her abstract work of the 1950s.
 
 
 Ruth Armer
The Light Place
ca. n.d.
Acrylic on canvas
10.125 x 14.125 inches
 
Ruth Armer
 
Ruth Armer was an active, exhibiting artist until her death on August 29, 1977 in her beloved native city of San Francisco.
 
Solo Exhibitions:
Vickery, Atkins & Torrey, 1922
Cleveland Museum of Art
San Francisco Museum of Art, 1936, 1939
Quay Gallery, 1972, 1975

Public Collections:
Oakland Museum
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
 
____________________________________________________________
Sources
Calabri Gallery, http://calabigallery.com/artists/ruth-armer/, retrieved March 11, 2014.
SFMOMA On the Go, Works by Ruth Armer, http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artists/1055/artwork, retrieved, March 11, 2014.
AskArt: The Artist's Bluebook, Ruth Armer, http://www.askart.com/askart/a/ruth_armer/ruth_armer.aspx, retrieved, March 11, 2014.
Sylvia Moore, ed., Yesterday and Tomorrow, California Women Artists, Midmarch Arts Press, New York, 1989.
Patricia Trenton, ed. Independent Spirits, Women painters of the American West, 1890-1945, University of California Press, 1995.
Archives of American Art, Ruth Armer Papers, 1911-1976, http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/ruth-armer-papers-8803

"I MUST paint...it's a disease" Minerva Kohlhepp Teichert

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Minerva Kolhepp Teichert
When she wrote her memoirs in the late 1940s, painter Minerva Kohlhepp Teichert recalled the moment when her future as a Western woman artist became clear. She attended a critique in Robert Henri's portraiture class at the Art Students League in New York where she studied from 1915 to 1916. Henri asked her if anyone had ever visually told the "great Mormon story" and Teichert answered no, not to her satisfaction. Henri advised, "Good Heavens, girl what a chance. You do it. Your're the one!" Teichert left New York soon thereafter, returned to her family's homestead in Idaho, near the Utah border, married her "cowboy sweetheart," did the books for the family ranch, raised five children and painted almost every day of her life.

 Minerva Kohlhepp was born in North Ogden, but grew up in a  homestead farming family in the vicinity of American Falls, Idaho. Her father encouraged her sketching in childhood and she soon developed an "indomitable will to succeed and excel in the field of art."

Minerva left home for the first time at age fourteen to work as a nursemaid for a wealthy Idaho family in San Francisco where she was exposed to art in museums for the first time, and attended classes at Mark Hopkins Art School. However, it was not until she graduated from high school and taught for several years that she was able to pursue any serious art training. By age nineteen, she scraped together enough money to get to Chicago, where she studied at the Chicago Art Institute under the draftsman, John Vanderpoel, a master of the academic school of painting. Several times during her three-year course work she returned home in order to earn more money in the fields or in the classroom to get back to school to follow her dream. To finance her study in New York, she created a roping act for the New York stage and this is when she began her custom of wearing a distinctive head band. 
Minerva Kohlhepp Teichert
Hole-in-the-Rock
n.d.
Oil on canvas
LDSArt.com


Minerva quickly emerged as a top student in her popular art classes. When questioned about her choice of subjects for her art, she’d say, “There’s too much sagebrush in my blood to forget the beauties of rugged mountains [and] dry plains.” She was recognized for the excellent quality of her animal paintings as well. For over half a century, Teichert painted hundreds of murals and easel paintings for churches, schools, and private patrons throughout the Rocky Mountain region. Well-known throughout the Mormon community, Teichert's obscurity in the art world may be due to her particular attention to Mormon history and theology. She concentrated her work on scenes from western Americana and religious artwork that expressed her deeply held convictions.

Teichert painted over 400 murals in which women and western themes feature prominently such as The Madonna of 1847, which depicts a mother and child in a covered wagon, crossing the plains to settle in Utah. Teichert is known for a set of 42 murals from the Book of Mormon, as well as her murals inside the Manti Utah Temple. Teichert's distinctive style can be seen in the painting Christ in a Red Robe, in which women can be seen reaching out to Christ, who is depicted in a red robe at his second coming, referencing Isaiah.

Minerva Kohlhepp Teichert
Christ in a Red Robe
ca. 1945
Oil on canvas
LDS Museum Store Online
 
During the 1930s, early in the Great Depression, Teichert's commitment to her art work began to pay off. Like most everyone else, the Teicherts were struggling to make ends meet. Minerva was determined to contribute with her artwork, but she needed to reach out to a larger market. She traveled to Salt Lake City in search of an agent. At a meeting with Alice Merrill Horne, a well-connected art dealer in Utah, she unrolled a mural and said simply, “Please look at this.” Horne was astonished. Just two weeks later, Horne had arranged an exhibit of Teichert’s work and within months, Teichert would meet with the governor of Utah and receive enthusiastic reviews of her art in major Utah newspapers. In 1932, when the Teicherts’ economic situation reached a crisis, Horne found several buyers, and Teichert’s paintings saved the ranch.

As Teichert’s profile rose in Utah, the artist continued to explore stories of the Mormon migration and scriptural themes. By 1947, she had risen to the top of the Mormon art world, winning first prize in the Church’s centennial art contest and became the first woman invited to paint a temple mural.
Teichert increasingly felt it was her responsibility to tell the Book of Mormon story in images so that “he who runs may read,” a common phrase from the time taken from the book of Habakkuk. After finishing the Manti Temple mural, she set out on what she expected to be her masterwork—42 paintings of Book of Mormon stories, rendered large enough and simple enough to be “read” at a glance.
Minerva Kohlhepp Teichert
Handcart Pioneers
ca.1940
Oil on canvas
 77 x 49 inches
Brigham Young University Museum of Art, Provo, Utah
Finishing the paintings in 1952, the 64-year-old Teichert anticipated how the works might accompany the Book of Mormon text, or be used as slides by missionaries around the world, or be sold as a book of paintings. Unfortunately, they were never sold. She was praised for her beautiful art work, but no one bought the paintings, and, for the remainder of her life, she strove to find a buyer. Her longtime agent and friend died, murals became less popular and tastes changed. It became more difficult for Teichert to get commissions and to sell her work. Not to be discouraged, she continued to paint, she found a new agent, and her artwork with western themes became marketable in Utah and beyond.

Minerva Kohlhepp Teichert
Queen Esther
ca. 1939
Oil on Canvas
14 x 9.7 inches
Collection of Betty Curtis and William Lee Stokes 
In the spring of 1970, Teichert fell from her porch and broke her hip, possibly after suffering a stroke. She would never paint again. She died in 1976. The story does not end here, however. In 1969 she had given the Book of Mormon paintings to Brigham Young University with no compensation or promise of publication. Upon receipt BYU showed the paintings briefly, then stored them away. In 1997, after the resurgence of interest in her work, BYU held a major exhibit of the Book of Mormon paintings and created a companion volume of the collection. BYU religion professors also lobbied to have Teichert’s Book of Mormon series line the hallways of the Joseph Smith Building, making it possible, in effect, for those who run to Book of Mormon class to read.

Her work was re-discovered after her death with a new appreciation for her excellent technique and the enormity of her body of work. Teichert's works are displayed at the campus of BYU including the Museum of Art. One of Teichert's most famous exhibits, "Pageants in Paint," has been on display in the BYU Museum of Art. The exhibition examined how the American mural and pageantry movements influenced Teichert’s artistic production through 47 of her large-scale narrative murals.


Minerva Kohlhepp Teichert
Return of Captive Israel
ca. 1945
53 1/2 x 90 inches
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
Relief Society Building, Salt Lake City, Utah
 
During her many active years, Teichert had one-person exhibitions at the Washington Museum, New York (1915), and at the Alice Merrill Horne Galleries, Salt Lake City (1932, 1939). Among group shows, she hung works at the Idaho State Capitol, Boise; Springville Museum of Art, UT; First National Exhibition of American Art, New York; and event of the Wyoming Artists Association.

____________________________________________________________
Sources:
Painting the Mormon Story, Peter B. Gardner, http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=2124, (retrieved 3/28/2014). 
Brigham Young University News Release, Opening reception for “Minerva Teichert: Pageants in Paint” Sept. 26 at MOAhttp://news.byu.edu/archive07-Sep-pageant.aspx (retrieved 3/ 27/2014)
Independent Spirits, Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, Patricia Trenton, ed.
An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovnick and Marian Yoshiki Kovnick.


Abby Williams Hill: Tacoma Painter and a Woman before her Time

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Abby Williams Hill
ca. 1870s
I am so inspired by the story of Abby Rhoda Williams Hill (1861–1943) and I hope you are as well. Abby was a painter and an activist with a love of travel and learning. Her artwork provides a lasting vision of many of the iconic sights of the American West, and her papers paint a rich picture of American life between the Civil War and World War II. Hill was an intrepid explorer who loved to be in the wilderness, unhampered by societal codes of dress and behavior, She was a Progressive and firm advocate to the Congress of Mothers (today’s National Parent Teacher Association) and lobbied on behalf of disadvantaged children, African Americans, Native Americans, and other marginalized groups.

Abby Hill grew up in Grinnell, Iowa, with much encouragement in her art by her parents and received early art training from her aunt, a botanical watercolorist. She studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1883, and then, at the Art Students League in New York under the tutelage of William Merritt Chase. After her marriage to Dr. Frank R. Hill in December of 1888 in Brooklyn, New York, the couple moved to Tacoma, Washington, just as Washington Territory became the 42nd state. They remained there and at nearby Vashon Island until 1910. While a resident there, Hill continued her art training in Munich (1895-97) with Herman Haase, and at the Corcoran Gallery School, Washington, D.C. in 1905 when she made the decision to pursue painting as a career.

Abby and Frank Hill
ca. N.D.
Hill was far from the typical Victorian woman. When her husband, Frank, demanded she wear a corset and bustle like other genteel housewives of the period, she negotiated. If he would agree to wear the uncomfortable undergarments for a day, and if, after that experience, he still expected her  to do so, she would acquiesce. A reasonable man, Dr. Hill agreed to the experiment and never again asked his wife to squeeze herself into an hourglass shape in the name of fashion.

During their time in Washington, Hill reared a family of four children. Her first child, son, Romayne Bradford, was born partially paralyzed, but with her love of the outdoors and belief that fresh air and exercise would be the tonic needed to help her son, she dedicated the next six years to his health. Over the ensuing years, the Hills adopted three more children (all girls) all of whom would accompany her on local camping trips and travels, typically without Frank.

Hills' independent spirit is difficult to appreciate during our time in which women have so much freedom and so many opportunities. The Victorian era dictated strict rules of behavior for women that Hill largely disregarded. She often headed into the wilderness to paint in remote places, usually accompanied by at least two of her children — which made traveling even more of a challenge. At her campsites, she kept a journal, describing her encounters with snakes, landslides, Indians on horseback, rain, wind and, at one point, such intense heat that she couldn't pick up her metal paint tubes without burning her fingers.

Abby Williams Hill
Horseshoe Basin
ca. 1903
Oil on canvas
University of Puget Sound
In 1909, Dr. Hill suffered a mental breakdown that left him catatonic for weeks at a time. Forced to leave Tacoma due to her husband's recurring illness, diagnosed as Psychotic Depression, Hill moved the family to Laguna Beach, California, then a remote, burgeoning artist colony. Abby became a founding member of the Laguna Beach Art Association.

Dr. Hill became a patient at various hospitals and for years, Hill cared for him and surrendered much of her time dedicated to painting to help him recover. When he was released in 1924, she bought an automobile to allow the family to winter in Tucson Arizona, travel to the Deep South, and explore a number of locations in the West. Unfortunately, in 1931, Dr. Hill's illness forced him to return to the hospital in Southern California, so Abby settled in nearby San Diego to be available when her husband needed her.
Abby Williams Hill
Balsatic Rocks
ca. 1904
Oil on canvas
44 x 34 inches
The Athenaum
Abby Williams Hill
Grotto Playing
ca. 1906
Oil on canvas
17 x 22 inches
The Athenaum
Hill became a painter of the West in the 1890s. Her most widely displayed artwork was created during the first decade of the twentieth century when she was commissioned by both the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railroads to produce a series of landscapes of the scenes along their routes. Abby was to create 22 oil on canvas pieces in 18 weeks while traveling on trains, handcars, stages, steamboats, and horses. In exchange for the use of her work, she was given four tickets, each worth one thousand miles. Hill would travel to the most remote locations to record the beauty of the west, and at the end of her journey, surrender her canvases and her rights to them to the railroads. In addition, as a woman traveling without male companionship, she was vulnerable to unwanted attention from men who made certain assumptions about her character. Hill braved the discomfort of heat and cold, trudged across snowfields, organized baggage and cared for her children, often brought along on her expeditions. Her assignments took her to such rugged locations as remote terrain in Washington, Idaho, Montana, and other areas west of the Cascades.

Abby Hill camping with her four children
Probably before 1910
During this period, Hill met and painted a number of Native Americans including the Flathead of Montana, the Nez Perce of Spalding, Idaho, the People of north-central Montana at Harlem, and the Yakima of Washington. She considered the Native Americans her friends and portrayed them with dignity and respect. She bartered with the Flathead to exchange English lessons for dancing lessons, and, with a list of grievances, wrote to Washington, D.C. on their behalf.
ca. n.d.
Oil on canvas
Missoula Art Museum
Chief White BullTa-tan-ka-sha
Minniconjou Sioux, Flathead Reservation, Montana
ca. 1905
Dakota-Lakota-Nakota Human Rights Advocacy Coalition
Following the death of her husband in 1938, Abby Hill became bedridden. She died in Laguna Beach  in 1943 five years later.

Hill's exhibitions included those of the Western Washington Industrial Exposition, Tacoma; World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago; Lewis and Clark Exposition, Portland, Oregon, Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Jamestown Centennial, Hampton Roads, Virginia; Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (two gold medals), Seattle; and Laguna Beach Art Association. The University of Puget Sound held an exhibition of her works in 1964.

Abby Williams Hill is represented in the collections of Ames College, Iowa, Grinnell College, Iowa, and a permanent collection of her works and papers is held by the University of Puget Sound.
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Sources
University of Puget Sound, Abby Williams Hill Collection, http://www.pugetsound.edu/academics/academic-resources/collins-memorial-library/archives/abby-williams-hill-collection/, retrieved April 7, 2014.
Abby Williams Hill: Unfettered in Life and Art, Shelia Farr, Seattle Times Art Critic, http://seattletimes.com/html/entertainment/2003797045_visart20.html, retrieved, April 7, 2014.
Chattermarks from North Cascade Institute, http://chattermarks.ncascades.org/?s=abby+Williams+Hill+in+the+North+cascades, retrieved April 8, 2014.
An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovnick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovnick, University of Texas Press, 1998.
Dakota-Lakota-Nakota Human Rights Advocacy Coalition, http://www.dlncoalition.org/dln_nation/chief_white_bull.htm, retrieved April 10, 2014.
National Parks and the Woman's Voice: A History, Polly Welts Kaufman, New Mexico Press, 2006.

Emma Belle Freeman: Early Photographer of Native Ameicans

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Emma Belle Richart Freeman
1880-1928
Self-Portrait
ca. 1913
Eureka, California
Living in northern California in the first decade of the Twentieth Century, Emma B. Freeman existed under a dual handicap - she was both a strong woman and an artist. Her success and recognition were even more significant when we consider the prevalence of male-domination over women in society during that time, and the general attitude that women belonged strictly in the home. Artists working in the remote area miles north of San Francisco, even artwork created by men, were largely ignored by the outside world. These factors may account for Emma's relative obscurity to this day.

Born in Nebraska,  Emma lived on a farm with her parents until she moved to Denver as a young adult, where she found work as a ribbon clerk. There, she met and married Edwin Freeman in 1902, and couple relocated to San Francisco where they opened a stationery and art supplies store in the heart of the city. During their time in San Francisco, Freeman studied painting with renowned Northern California artist Giuseppe Cadenasso.Unfortunately, like so many others, the store was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake, and the Freemans chose to relocate to Eureka, a remote region 275 miles north of San Francisco.The couple opened the Freeman Art Company which specialized in art supplies and a variety of other items. By 1910, they were also involved in commercial photography.

Freeman was a free spirit with an independent voice and vibrant character. Between 1910 and 1920 she produced her Northern California series of Indian portraits. Freeman often intermixed native costume - such as Yurok dance regalia and Navajo blankets - to create romantically conceived ideals of the "Noble" Indian. She frequently hand-colored her photographs and added allegorical details to enhance her compositions. Though sometimes shunned for her Bohemian lifestyle, Freeman did much to improve public sympathy for the Native American in Northern California. In 1915, for example, her principal model, Bertha Thompson (Princess Ah-Tra-Ah-Saun), was selected to head the parade at the Panama Pacific International Exposition, which was held in San Francisco. Her romanticized photographs and the influence of Pictorialism, idealized the Native Americans and thrust them into heroic roles. Ultimately her art and her strength lay in the manner in which she combined the best elements of both. Without wealth and the status it provided, Freeman had to negotiate a way to make art and a living. She, along with other forward thinking women of her time, created a path where none existed for those of future generations.
Emma Belle Richart Freeman
Romance
ca. 1900-1910
Northern California Series
As a whole, Freeman's observations of Native Americans were romantic dreams...a spiritual concept of nature as the common source of perfection. Mankind, especially the Native American, appeared in this idyllic paradise in roles of heroic splendor. By 1913, the popular idea of "nature" had begun to assume a new meaning to whole generations of young people who had never participated in the early settlers' struggle to colonize the West. Her "Northern California Series" intended to picture Native Americans with dignity and to grant them a place of honor, albeit through an idyllic lens.
Emma Belle Richart Freeman
Romance
ca. 1900-1910
Northern California Series
Freeman pursued an art form that combined drawing, painting and photography, one in which the artist's own hand was evident throughout. Her popular Indian portraits were exhibited at the Panama Pacific Exposition, and were chronicled in various industry journals like Camera Craft and popular magazines such as the Illustrated Review. One of her photographs was presented to President Warren G. Harding and hung prominently in the White House.


In 1915, a romantic encounter between Emma and a visiting dignitary led to scandal and ultimately to the divorce of the Freemans. She continued work, however, and to shoot beyond portraiture. During World War I, Freeman photographed a United States submarine that had run aground on a beach near Eureka. The cruiser Milwaukee, dispatched to the scene to aid in the rescue was lost to the heavy surf as well. Freeman was there to capture every detail of the disaster and rushed her photos to San Francisco where they appeared on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle, which noted: "Every day since the Milwaukee went ashore, Mrs. Freeman has been  on the job with her camera. She has taken more than 200 photographs of the scene, most of them under trying conditions of fog and wind and weather."  Freeman waded through water and rats in the hold of the vessel as she boarded the water-logged cruiser in search of great photographs. In recognition for her documentary work, she was appointed the "official government photographer" for all matters relating to the disaster and salvage operations.


Emma Belle Richart Freeman
Stranding of USS Milwaukee
ca. January 13,  1917
Photograph-Department of the Navy -- Naval Historical Center
Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C.

In 1919, Freeman relocated her arts and novelty supply company to san Francisco and she set up in a newly remodeled three-story building. Freeman did art and advertising work there, along with selling art and Indian goods until 1923, when competition and an unscrupulous business partner led her into bankruptcy. Freeman moved to a smaller store and continued to work until her retirement in 1925. On Christmas Eve, 1927, Freeman had a debilitating stroke and finally passed away three months later, at age 48, in March of 1928.

The late photographic historian, Peter E. Palmquist, wrote of Mrs. Freeman, "Emma brought a unique vision to subject matter, for her approach to composition was heroic, her subject treatment allegorical, and her style painterly. Her surviving photographs clearly illustrate her training in the fine arts. Her groundbreaking efforts were made almost entirely on her own; in fact, her contemporaries in the region were purely traditional photographers. She alone enjoyed the reputation of 'artist with the camera'."   

Emma Belle Richart Freeman
Bartered Bride
ca. 1900-1910
Northern California Series

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Sources:
Emma Belle Freeeman, Photographer, http://www.historiccamera.com/cgi-bin/librarium2/pm.cgi?action=app_display&app=datasheet&app_id=2685&, retrieved April 22, 2014.
Women Artists of the American West, Women Photographers and the American Indian,
Peter E. Palmquist, retrieved April 22, 2014.
Women Artists of the American West, Susan Ressler, ed. McFarland & Company, Inc. North Carolina, 2003, p. 214-215.
Ask Art, Emma Belle Freeman, http://www.askart.com/AskART/index.aspx, retrieved April 23, 2014.
 


Helen Hyde: American Artist, Asian Identity

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Helen Hyde
1868-1919
Helen Hyde embodies the art movement known as japonism: the artistic, historic, and ethnographic study of Japanese art. Hyde was raised in San Francisco and began her art education with artist-teachers in The City. As a child, she was exposed to Asian culture there and copied the beautiful and delicate Japanese prints. Hyde joined the Sketch Club and was a developing watercolorist while she studied at the California School of Design. Helen also spent time honing her craft in New York, at the Art Students League from 1888 until 1889, after which she traveled to Berlin and Paris to continue her art studies. Felix Regamey, one of Hyde's French instructors, was instrumental in exposing her to Asian art through his extensive Japanese art and artifact collection and, under his tutelage, she became part of the japonism movement.

While she lived and studied in Paris, Hyde most likely saw the 1893 exhibition of Mary Cassatt's color etchings which were inspired by the Japanese use of color, content, and perspective. By 1894, Hyde had returned to California and began to sketch likenesses of women and children in San Francisco's Chinatown. Through the Sketch Club, Hyde met, and became friends with another artist, Josephene Hyde (no relation) who was an etcher. Together they attempted color etchings, and in 1899, the two women settled in Japan to learn that country's painting techniques.

Helen Hyde
Baby Talk
 ca.1908.
Color woodcut
11 3/8 x 18 1/4 inches.
Josephene returned to America, while Helen spent the next fifteen years working in her Tokyo studio situated in an old temple. In Japan, Hyde learned the Japanese woodblock printing techniques from masters such as Emil Orlik, a European artist living in Japan. Hyde lived in Japan from 1903 through 1913 and refined color woodblock printing to a fine art.

Helen Hyde
An April Evening
ca.1910
Color woodcut
3 5/8 x 4 7/8 inches

Hyde studied for two years with the last of the Kano school artists, Kano Tomanobu, and learned the Japanese style of painting. She became skilled at the creation of woodblock prints and was invited to execute a kakemono, is a Japanese scroll painting mounted usually with silk fabric edges on a flexible backing, at an annual spring exhibition in Tokyo.


Helen Hyde
Going to the Fair
ca.1910
Color woodcut
7 3/4 x 19 inches
Because of the extensive collection of letters and prints saved by both Hyde and her relatives, an examination of her life provides a window into the experiences of an American woman who selected her subject matter and was faithful to the development and representation of her subject and style. Her women-centered artwork was filled with figures who were mothers or workers. She did not explore the prevailing Japanese women depicted by many male artists during the latter nineteenth century: the Geisha.

Hyde belonged to the Tokyo Woman's Club, at the time, however, the club did not admit Japanese women to membership. Japanese women were slowly gaining public recognition and acceptance to the Tokyo Art Institute. Hyde makes no mention of Japanese women artists or friends in her letter to her family. Hyde created a charming, pre-industrial world in her prints and preferred the traditional Japanese dress to the increasing popularity of Western clothing the was worn by many.


Helen Hyde
New Year's Day in Tokyo
ca.1914
Color woodcut
3/8 x 17 5/8 inches
Helen Hyde produced seventy-one color woodcut designs during her time in Japan which resulted in as many as 16,000 prints. She was a respected member of the art community and worked with a number of well-known and well-regarded artists and craftsmen there. Thanks to the care of her personal effects and artwork by her family, Hyde's prints are found in museums and her letters and printmaking tools are preserved in the California Historical Society.

Helen Hyde
The Furious Dragon
ca.1914
Color woodcut
 5 7/8 x 6 1/2 inches
Helen Hyde had been battling cancer for several years and by 1914, she became discouraged because she tired so easily and found it difficult to work. She returned home to the United States and died five years later. in Pasadena, California. 
 
Hyde's popularity has enjoyed a resurgence. Her prints are still sold at public galleries, and a vast collection of her works are included in the archives of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Hyde's works can be seen at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C as well. Two of her award-winning works are A Monarch of Japan and Baby Talk. In 1901, A Monarch of Japan took first place in the Nihon Kaiga Kyokai exhibition and the piece is now located at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.In 1909, Baby Talk received a Gold Medal at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exhibition and it is now housed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.      

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Sources
Conrad Graeber, Fine Art: Helen Hyde, http://www.conradgraeber.com/Hyde.html, retrieved 5/714.
Yesterday and Tomorrow: California Women Artists, edited by Sylvia Moore, Midmarch Arts Press, New York, 1989, 93.
Women Artists of the American West, edited by Susan Ressler, McFarland and Company, Inc., 2003, 245-246.
Women Artists of the American West, Helen Hyde Printmaker, Joan M. Jenson, http://www.cla.purdue.edu/waaw/jensen/hyde.html, 1998, retrieved 5/8/14.
Artelino, Japanese Prints, Helen Hyde, http://www.artelino.com/articles/helen-hyde.asp, retrieved 5/8/14.

Elizabeth Ayer: Pioneer Seattle Architect

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Elizabeth Ayer
ca. 1939
Courtesy University of Washington,
Special Collections
On this journey to bring to your attention the hundreds of female artists that have been largely forgotten, or never known by most people, I do not want to neglect the architects. Elizabeth Ayer is an important woman of whom you should be aware.
Ayer's family arrived in the Washington Territory in 1852-among the earliest Anglo settlers. Her father was a lawyer and judge, her mother, an artist. Her interest in mathematics and art led Elizabeth to pursue architecture at the University of Washington, where she became the first female graduate of the University's architecture program. She received her degree in 1921, and in 1930 became the first female architect registered within the state of Washington. In the residential area, Ayer was instrumental in the synthesis of traditional Colonial forms such as double hung sash windows and a classically detailed cornice, with an irregular, boxy composition.

While Ayer’s career is linked primarily with architect Edwin J. Ivey, she worked for Andrew Willetzen in Seattle, for the architectural firm of Cross & Cross, and for Grosvenor Atterbury in New York. In addition, Ayer was interested in European architecture and twice during the 1920s, she spent a year abroad to tour and to study.

In 1927, Elizabeth Ayer began to collaborate with Ivey on a number of high profile commissions for Seattle’s social  and economic elite. Ivey provided Ayer with critical support and the guidance that would shape her approach to domestic architecture. In 1924, she was principal architect for at least one residence built in The Highlands (a gated community on Puget Sound) for C. W. Stimson. The design for these homes was traditional, predominantly Colonial Revival (with features such as the aforementioned double hung sash windows). The Langdon C. Henry residence (1927-1928), located in The Highlands, is a textbook example of the revivalist aesthetics driving domestic architectural design in the 1920s, especially in the more exclusive neighborhoods.


Langdon C. Henry residence,
The Highlands, ca. 1927-28.Courtesy University of Washington,
Special Collections
Ayer continued to employ her trademark period revival facades.  However, rear elevations and the interior spaces of her projects had a recognizable modernist flavor and often featured expanses of glass, modern materials and open floor plans.  Notable projects include the Davis House (1950) on Mercer Island; the Douds House (1951), which was featured in the book, Practical Houses for Contemporary Living; the Linden House (1962) on Bainbridge Island; and the Forland House (1963) in Seattle.
Robert F. Linden residence
Ayer and Lamping,
Bainbridge Island, 1962Courtesy University of Washington,
 Special Collections
William E. Forland residence,
Ayer and Lamping
Seattle, 1961-63,
Courtesy Shaping Seattle Architecture, Ochsner
In 1940, Ivey was killed in an automobile accident. After his death, Ayer took over the firm with Roland Lamping, another employee and graduate of the University of Washington. They continued the practice, but abandoned large-scale residential designs in favor of smaller residential and commercial projects. In 1942, they suspended the practice for the duration of World War II and Ayer worked as an Architect in the U.S. Engineers Office. She restarted the practice after 1945. Some time during the 1950s, the firm name was changed to Ayer & Lamping.
Elizabeth Ayer retired in 1970 after fifty years of successful architectural practice. She moved to Lacey, Washington, where she served on the Planning Commission through 1980. Ayer died in Lacey in 1987.
Elizabeth Ayer
Hawthorne K. Dent residence, Seattle, Washingto,
Architectural Drawing-West elevation and window details
ca. 1936
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Sources
1. HistoryLink.org, The Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, Ayer, Elizabeth (1897-1987), Architect, http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=1721, retrieved May 19, 2014.
2. Washington State Department of Archeology and Historic Preservation, Elizabeth Ayer (1897-1987),  http://www.dahp.wa.gov/learn-and-research/architect-biographies/elizabeth-ayer, retrieved May 19, 2014.
3. University Libraries, University of Washington Digital Collections, http://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/ac/id/1198/rec/4, retrieved May 19, 2014.


Anna Belle Crocker: Artist and Director of the Portland Art Museum

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AnnaBelleCrocker
Self Portrait
ca. 1926
Oil on panel
Portland Art Museum
While the first non-native, professional artists were men who arrived in the Pacific Northwest to accompany geographic surveys such as the United States Exploring Expedition of 1842, female artists put down roots and settled. They taught art classes, started art clubs and established a number of the art institutions that are still an integral part of the cultural community of Portland and the region.

Art practice and education were two of the few professions deemed appropriate and were available to women before World War II and, as a result, women generally outnumbered men in those fields. According to Jack Cleaver, curator of collections at the Oregon Historical Society, women had a "tremendous impact..." on the early development of the Oregon art community in three specific areas: "They dominated art exhibits at the Oregon State Fair, various Portland fairs, and county fairs during the nineteenth century. Also during that period, art teachers in Oregon were nearly all female, and, with the exception of the Portland Art Club, women were well represented in early art organizations. 

Anna Belle Crocker (1898-1961) was an artist who worked as both a portraitist and genre painter, that is a painter of scenes of everyday life. Crocker was director of the Portland Art Museum and principal of its art school, which is now the Pacific Northwest College of Art, from the years 1909 until 1936. At that point, courses in museum administration and connoisseurship were nonexistent, so Crocker educated herself by spending time at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, followed by a five-month tour of museums and galleries in England, France, Italy and Greece, where she conducted interviews and studied hundreds of works of art.    

During her lengthy tenure at the Portland Art Museum, Crocker not only continued an ambitious exhibition schedule, she expanded the museum’s permanent collections and helped to oversee the design and construction of the Ayer wing of the present museum building.“In the 110-year history of the PortlandArt Museum,” observes art historian Prudence F. Roberts, “few people have exerted as much quiet influence as Anna B. Crocker.” In addition, she founded the docent program which supported her quest to make the museum an educational experience by training knowledgeable tour guides for school visits and for the general public.


AnnaBelleCrocker
Leta M. Kennedy
ca. 1917-1918
Oil on board
Portland Art Museum
A dedicated artist, Crocker continued to study and was a member of the Portland Sketch Club in which she specialized in portraits and still-lifes. On at least two occasions, in 1904 and 1908, Crocker took time off from her job to study at the Art Students League in New York with Frank Vincent DuMond, whom she had met in Portland, and with Arthur Wesley Dow, whose theories influenced the work of artist Georgia O’Keeffe.

Marcel Duchamp
Nude Descending a Staircase
ca. 1912
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Crocker sought out and exhibited original works by both local and regional artists, and established ties with other institutions willing to share their collections of European and American prints and paintings.One of her most notable successes was to arrange the loan of Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912), the most controversial painting of the 1913 Armory Show held in New York.Duchamp’s painting was exhibited in Portland later that year, along with works on paper by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and other members of the European and American avant-garde.In her memoirs, Crocker compared seeing the “new” art for the first time to a “ray of daylight let into a shaded room.”   
When Anna Belle Crocker retired in 1936, she had spent 27 years at the helm of the museum and its school. Crocker was praised for her “intellectual integrity, her constant and courageous pressure to attain her ideas, her religious devotion to art, and her ability to use small facilities for great ends.”   
Anna Belle Crocker
Ruth and Jean Reed
ca. 1920
Watercolor on Paper
Portland Art Museum
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Sources
Women City Builders, Honoring Women's Civic Contributions to Portland, Sandra Hoff, 2003, http://wcb.ws.pdx.edu/?p=105, retrieved May 28, 2014.
Portland Art Museum, Online Collections, Anna Belle Crocker, http://www.portlandartmuseum.us/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=keyword;keyword=anna%20belle%20crocker#, retrieved May 28, 2014.
Independent Spirits, Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, Patricia Trenton, ed., University of California Press, 1995, p 107-108.
The Oregon Encyclopedia, a Project of the Oregon Historical Society, http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/portland_art_association/#.U4Tew6Pn_cs

Cor de Gravere: Dutch Portraitist and Landscape Painter

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Cor de Gravere
1877-1955
A tenacious woman who was able to overcome almost unimaginable adversity and prevailed on her own terms, Cornelia de Gavere was born in Battavia, Java, East Indies in 1877. She was the daughter of Dr. Cornelius and Marchje (Berghuis) de Gavere, Dutch missionaries. Cor lost both parents and two brothers when she was just six years old. The young Cor was sent to Groningen, Holland with her sister to live with a stern aunt and uncle who took in the orphaned children. They promptly sent her sister off to boarding school, so childhood was a lonely time for Cor. Separated from her sister, she was sent off to boarding school as well. Her developing interest in art during these years was viewed with disfavor by her uncle. He prevailed upon her to take a position as an assistant pharmacist where she worked for a time in Amsterdam, although she continued to draw and paint whenever possible.
In 1907, at the age of 30, Cor committed to the study of art and she entered the Royal Academy of the Hague. She received a number of honors while attending school there. Upon completion, de Gavere moved to the small Dutch artist's colony at Blaricum to paint and she studied in paris for three years. During these years she established a lasting friendship with Wilhelmina Van Tonnigen, who gave her the motherly encouragement and support that she had missed in her early childhood. 

In the year 1911, de Gavere exhibited at the Annual Derby Exhibition and at the London Salon between 1912 and 1914. She also exhibited at the British Royal Academy. In addition, in 1914, Cor studied in Paris with Charles Guerin in his atelier, but as World War I raged, served with the Red Cross as a volunteer nurse in Paris.
Cor de Gravere
Santa Cruz Portrait
ca. n.d.
Oil on Canvas
24 x 30 inches
In 1920, at age 43, de Gavere immigrated to the United States with Van Tonnigen, her friend during the years study at the Dutch Academy, and two women were warmly welcomed by the local Dutch community in the Santa Cruz area in California. During the 1920s, de Gavere exhibited as one of the ''Santa Cruz Three'' with Rogers and Leonora Penniman. Beginning in 1928, when the shows were initiated, she exhibited frequently at the Santa Cruz Art League's statewide exhibitions. Her other exhibitions included those of the SFAA; California State Fair, Sacramento; West Coast Arts, Inc., Los Angeles; Oakland Art Gallery; GGIE; and Society for Sanity in Art, San Francisco.

Cor de Gravere
Twin Lakes Beach, Santa Cruz
ca. 1920s
Oil on canvas board
 10 x 12 inches
During her thirty-five year residency in Santa Cruz, de Gavere worked as a librarian at both the Seabright and Garfield branch libraries, and was a founder of the Santa Cruz Art League. She painted nearly every day. Cor found a painting companion in Margaret Rogers, one of the guiding forces of the Santa Cruz Art League through the 1920s through the 1940s. The two artists made frequent excursions to paint locally and, on occasion, in the Sierra Nevada and elsewhere in the state. Most of her work resulted from trips with Rogers, although she also painted portraits. Her landscapes had titles like Turtleback Mountain; Mountain Meadow; Big Sur Cypress; Sierra Camp; The Three Graces; Blue Lupine Field; Pleasure Point, Moran Lake; Sierra Snow Bank; and Eucalyptus Meadow. 
Cor de Gravere
On the Ridge
ca. 1920s
Oil
14 x 19 inches

Cor de Gavere
California Oak
ca. n.d.
Oil on canvas
16 x 20 inches
An "everywoman," Cor wrote poetry, played music, and was active in local theater. Her work is represented in the collections of the Santa Cruz Historical Society and the Santa Cruz City Museum. Cornelia de Gavere died on June 25, 1955, while visiting family in The Hague, Netherlands.

Member: West Coast Arts; Berkeley Art League; Bay Region Art Association

Exhibited: Royal Academy (London), 1911; London Salon, 1912-14; SFAA, 1924; Oakland Art Gallery, 1928, 1934; Santa Cruz Art League, 1934; Society for Sanity in Art, CPLH, 1940; Santa Cruz Public Library, 1974 (retrospective).

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Sources
Santa Cruz Public Libraries, Cor de Gavere, Artist. 1877-1955, Nikki Silva, 1984, http://www.santacruzpl.org/history/articles/222/, retrieved June 4, 2014.
Trotter Galleries, Biography Cornelia de Gavere, Artist. 1877-1955, http://www.trottergalleries.com/artistbio.asp?at=CorneliadeGavere&InvNo=, retrieved June 5, 2014.
California View Fine Arts, Cor de Gavere, http://www.californiaviewfinearts.com/c_d_gavere.htm, retrieved June 5, 2014.
An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marion Yoshiki Kovinick, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1998.
WWWAA; Benezit; Johnson &. Greutzner; Petteys; Moure; Hughes; Cor de Gavere; Hethcock; Rogers; Santa Cruz Sentinel-News, 18 Feb 1931, 9 Jan 1949, 2,4 Jun 1951, 18 Nov 1951, 4 Nov 1952, 1 Feb 1953, 1 Jul 1955, 5 Jul 1955, 28 Mar 1971, 4 Aug 1974;11 Aug 1974; Calif State Library card (1925).

What I did on my Summer Vacation

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If you would be so kind as to indulge me, I would like to share some of the photographs I took on my magical trip to Italy, Norway, and England this past month. I am, after all, a female artist/photographer working in the West!

There was a method to our country selections...both my mother's parents are from central Italy in mountain towns northeast of Naples, my husband, Howard, has family on his father's side from the Gudbrandsalen valley in Norway, and his delightful cousin and her husband, stupendous tour guides both, live in lovely Cornwall, England.

Our intention was to continue to chip away at the "bucket list" of countries we want to visit and to plan for the next journey to catch some of the sights that we simply could not see in the time we allotted for each place. There is NEVER enough time to cover all of it, of course, but we managed to fill our heads with the most divine sights in New York, Rome, Pompeii, Paestum, Venice, Murano, Oslo, Flam and fjords, Newquay, and Port Isaac, the town that is the mythical Port Wenn in one of our favorite BBC offerings, Doc Martin. Our brains are now, full.

We flew from Los Angeles to New York and spent one night, hoping to ease into the anticipated, radical time change. We walked around Manhattan and enjoyed sights such as the Chrysler building, and hung out in Central Park for most of a perfect day, blessed with sunshine, low temperatures, and NO humidity.

We arrived in Rome the following morning and immediately hit the streets. Our pensione was located right in the ancient section of Rome, adjacent to the Markets and Column of Trajan, the Colosseum, the Forum, Arches of Constantine and Titus, and a short walk to the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain! This was the type of view from any of the seven hills of Rome.


 As an Art Historian who has been teaching the history of art for 14 years, standing in ancient Rome, especially inside the Colosseum and the Pantheon, was more moving than I can describe! To touch the buildings and to feel the spirit of those ancestors who lived 2,000 years ago offered a connection to history that I had never before felt, even though I had grown up in and around Washington, D.C., a place where the foundation of our nation and so many of our own historical sites and events are located.


The sheer enormity of the structures all over the city of Rome, both ancient and not-so-ancient, was staggering. We were left with mouths open just trying to make sense of the accomplishments of the Romans, their planning, and feats of technology that allowed them to create such massive temples, forums, and gathering places. They must have both intimidated and overwhelmed the "common" citizen then, as they do now.

One of my favorite buildings, the Pantheon (temple to all gods), is just magnificent. It is the best preserved building from the ancient Roman period which housed statues of the pagan gods. Commissioned by Marcus Agrippa during the rein of Augustus, it was rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian in about CE 126. It has survived, unlike other ancient Roman structures, as it was converted into a Roman Catholic church during the Seventh Century.
The Pantheon entombs the remains of the early Renaissance painter, Raphael, and includes a bust of the artist, as well as the remains of his fiance, who unfortunately died before their marriage.

We managed to see the Circus Maximus where chariot races occurred and the Baths of Caracalla (Emperor of Rome from CE 211-217), both located near the ancient Appian Way, a short metro ride from our pensione. Again, the sheer magnitude of the baths was mind-boggling!

The ruins are incredibly well-preserved and include an array of mosaics that are still partially intact. The baths were easily able to accommodate up to 1,600 bathers who moved between three pools: frigidarium (cold), tepidarium (warm) and calderium (hot). Adjacent to the frigidarium were two massive zones called the Palaestra; gymnastic areas open to the sky. The Natatio, at the back of the building, held an Olympic-sized pool for recreational swimming. Along with the aforementioned, gardens and a library were included on the grounds. The baths are precurssors of modern gyms that provide their members places to socialize and to work out.


Our pensione, a small, family-run hotel, was located on the Via Cavour, which was a metro stop and a very busy thoroughfare that leads right down to the Forum. Entrance from the street through a gate, however, led to a lovely, private, courtyard and our room was at the back looking over a small lane. It was very much a city neighborhood with shops and restaurants along the lane. People stopped to chat with their neighbors and shop owners, and we hung out at the window just watching the activity during our occasional "down time."

Since we live in Southern California, and even in times of no drought get very little rain, we loved the afternoon thunderstorms that rolled through the city each day. I bought the typical five Euro tourist umbrella that turns inside out as soon as the wind picks up (and it did), but it served me well through the entire trip, and I left it in its entirety in Cornwall.

Rome is indeed a place to which we want to return. There is still so much to see!

Next stop: Pompeii and Paestum.
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