Blanche McVeigh: Printmaker, Gallery Owner, Educator

Blanche McVeigh
Trees
ca. N.D.
Etching with drypoint
Spencer Museum of the University of Kansas

Blanche McVeigh, was born in 1895 in St. Charles, Missouri. She moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where she grew up. Upon completion of high school, Blanche taught at the local W.A. Huffman School No. 1 for several years with little apparent enthusiasm. Interested in art, she switched gears and attended the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, Washington University during the years 1919 and 1920. After graduating from Washington University, McVeigh decided to become a professional artist. She joined the Wimberly Advertising Agency in Fort Worth in 1923 as an artist and remained in their employment until about 1930. During this time she studied at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts for one summer and at the Art Institute of Chicago for another. McVeigh subsequently attended the Art Students League in New York City and spent a year in Europe, where she first became interested in the medium of aquatint, a form of etching.

Blanche McVeigh
Tree on a Hill
ca. 1934
Etching with drypoint
7 x 9 inches

In 1932 Blanche joined fellow artists Evaline Sellors and Wade Jolley to establish the Fort Worth School of Fine Arts, where she taught figure drawing and etching and in addition, was responsible for bringing examples of the works of such masters as Matisse, Picasso, and Braque to the city. McVeigh also was manager of the Art Department of the Collins Art Company in Fort Worth. McVeigh and Sellors were founding members of the Fort Worth Artists Guild, the first local institution to display local artists. In 1942 McVeigh completed a commissioned etching for Northern Pump Company, a Minneapolis defense factory; her press at the time was not large enough for the print, so the company owner gave her a large, fine Sturges press, one of only seven made.

Blanche McVeigh
Accepted
ca. 1940Aquatint
12 x 8 5/8 inches

Blanche McVeigh
Commissary
ca. 1940
Aquatint10 5/8 x 14 7/8 inches

McVeigh produced an impressive number of images as she evolved from etchings to aquatints including a series on African American Spirituals. She also did western subjects, among them Fort Worth area landscapes, old buildings, as well as New Mexico themes.

Blanche McVeigh
Adobe Houses
ca. 1941Aquatint
9 3/4 x 13 3/4 inches

Blanche McVeigh
Cabrini Day Care Center
ca. N.D.
Aquatint on paper7 x 9 inches

Blanche McVeigh received awards from the Dallas Print Club, the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, the Texas Fine Arts Association, and the Southern States Art League. Her aquatint Gwine to Heaven (1945), a small work representing her impression of the Negro spiritual, was awarded the Lila May Chapman Prize of the Southern States Art League and was reproduced in American Prize Prints of the Twentieth Century. McVeigh was a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists, the Dallas Print Club, the Fort Worth Art Association, Prairie Printmakers, the California Society of Etchers, the Printmakers Guild of Texas, and the Southern States Art League. Her work is included in many national collections, among them the Library of Congress, the Carnegie Institute, Princeton University, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Smithsonian Institution. In Texas her works can be found in the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery in Austin, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Old Jail Art Center in Albany, the Amon Carter Museumqqv in Fort Worth, and the Fort Worth Art Association, as well as in many private collections. She died in Fort Worth on June 1, 1970.

Blanche McVeigh
Tall Door, St. Charles, Missouri
ca. N.D.Aquatint
9 3/8 x 12 3/8 inches

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Sources

Texas State Historical Society, Blanche McVeigh, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fmcbf, retrieved April 25, 2015.

An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki Kovinick, Blanche McVeigh, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1998, p. 215-216. 

Linda Peterson, "MCVEIGH, BLANCHE," Handbook of Texas Online(http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fmcbf), accessed April 24, 2015. Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

artnet, Blanche McVeigh, http://www.artnet.com/artists/blanche-mcveigh/adobe-houses-HENn5WkkZKQJMRU_t8GgNg2, retrieved April 25, 2015.

Julia Ann Rudolph: Capturing the Light

California is one of the few regions in the United States where the earliest women photographers has been the subject of scholarly research. Searching historical records for women photographers, painters, and sculptors requires considerable patience and exploration. Even today, female artists and photographers variously use their maiden names, change their last names to make recognition and pronunciation easier, or get married and take their husband's names. These changes make the search to correctly attribute work to the woman, especially for those working before the turn of the last century, infinitely more challenging. Our featured artist, Julia Rudolph also worked under the names Julia Ann Raymond, Mrs. James Ferdinand Rudolph and Julia Ann Swift.

Photography is one of the most historically significant inventions of all time. Although the principle of the camera was known in antiquity, the chemistry needed to register an image did not occur until the nineteenth century. Renaissance artists used a camera obscura (Latin for dark chamber), or a small hole in a darkened box that would pass light through the hole and project an image upside down of whatever was outside the box. It was not, however, until the invention of a light-sensitive surface created by Joseph Nicephore Niepce that the basic principle of photography was born.

Camera Obscura

The early pioneers in the medium experimented with its use as strict documentary photography during the Civil War, then setting up still-lifes and art-style portraits. Although it is thought that photography was almost exclusively a male-dominated profession, women have been involved with he medium since its invention in 1839.  By the mid 1840s, women were well established as commercial photographers in cities such as Boston, Chicago, New York, and St. Louis.

Julia Ann Rudolph
Nevada City, 1856
ca. 1856
Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

Julia Ann Rudolph was one of California's earliest photographers. The exact dates of her birth and death is unknown however, it is believed she lived from approximately 1820-1900. Rudolph was active in Utica, New York from 1852-1855; Nevada City, California from 1856-1860; and Sacramento, California from 1863-1890. Peter Palmquist, photography historian, claimed that "Rudolph's 36-year tenure as a California photographer is remarkable," and constitutes "an exceedingly rare longevity for a woman in that profession during the 19th century."

Rudolph was a studio portraitist who produced daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes mounted in leather and paper as was customary in the first decades of photographic portraiture. She was published in Hutchings' California Magazine (1857) with an engraving based on her ambrotype of Edward E. Matteson, developer of the hydraulic mining system.

Julia Ann Rudolph
Photograph of an unknown woman subject
ca. n.d.
Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

Julia Rudolph trained for the teaching profession and received her certificate in Litchfield, Connecticut in 1839, the same year that the first photographic process, the daguerreotype, was announced in France. By 1852, she was working as an operator in Daniel David Tompkins Davie's daguerreotype gallery in Utica, New York, and by April 1856, she had relocated to California in the former galleries of noted daguerreian George O. Kilbourn in Nevada City. The advertisement that noted her debut there stated, "she has all the latest instruments and chemicals and with the light of the gallery, which is unsurpassed by any in the state, she is confident of making the most perfect likenesses as well as beauty of tone and finish."

Julia Ann Rudolph
Mrs. Campbell
ca. n.d.
Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

By 1855, Julia was married and using the last name, "Raymond." She dealt in daguerreotypes but was prepared to work with photographs on paper as soon as the chemicals that she had ordered became available. The gallery burned in the fire of July 1856 and by September, Julia opened a new gallery on the same street adding ambrotypes to her repertoire. Sometime within the following three months, she reverted to using her maiden name, "Swift," indicates that she had undergone a divorce. In December of 1856, Julia married a pharmacist, James Ferdinand Rudolph, and she operated her business using his last name.

Julia Ann Rudolph
Photograph of a Young Girl in a White Dress
ca. n.d.
Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

 Julia Ann Rudolph
Photographs of Carrie Rudolph and Kate Y. Rudolph as Young Girls and Toddlers
ca. n.d.
Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

In September of 1860, Rudolph announced the closing of her ambrotype gallery in Nevada City and, by 1863, she and her husband had moved to Sacramento which remained in business until 1890. Rudolph's photographs are in the collection of the California State Library, Sacramento, the Women in Photography International Archive, Arcata, California, and the Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
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Sources:
For information on the early photographic process and various techniques see Early Photography, Niepce, Talbot, and Muybridge, https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/early-photography/a/early-photography-nipce-talbot-and-muybridge, retrieved April 13, 2015.
Women Artists of the American West, Susan R. Ressler ed., McFarland & Co, Inc., 2003.

Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865, Peter E. Palmquist, Thomas R. Kailbourn, Stanford University Press, 2000.