Louise Crow: Painter of Western Themes

Louise Crow
Yen-see-do painting
ca 1915
Oil on canvas
New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe New Mexico

Born in Seattle, Washington, on September 14 1891, Louise A. Crow grew up in the Pacific Northwest. She first studied art in high school with Ella Shepard and Paul Gustin, but did not begin serious training until 1914, when she attended William Merritt Chase's summer school program in Carmel, California. Crow continued to study intermittently at the San Francisco Institute of Art (later California School of Fine Arts) during the years 1914 to 1917, and at the Cincinnati Art Academy under Frank Duveneck from 1917 to 1918. Louise Crow studied at the National Academy of Design in New York and at the Art Students League under Max Weber. 

Louise Crow
Yen-see-do painting
ca 1915
Oil on canvas
New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe New Mexico

Louise (Boyac) Crow
Yen-see-do painting
ca 1915
Oil on canvas
St. George Art Museum, St. George, Utah

Crow traveled and studied in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 1918-1921. From a prominent Seattle family, Crow began exhibiting in California and Seattle as early as 1915, however, when she opened a studio in Santa Fe in 1918, her career began to soar. The harshly critical modernist painter, poet, and essayist, Marsden Hartley, reviewed her 1919 exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe with a positive comment: "The indication in her works is as clear as a clearly sounding bell, it has the ring of good metal in it."

Louise Crow
 Eagle Dance at San Ildefonso
ca 1919
Oil on canvas
Whatcom Museum, Seattle, Washington

Louise Crow worked in oils and watercolors, and with a wide variety of subjects including landscapes, Northwest scenes of rugged mountains, seascapes, and portraits of such historical figures as Ezra Meeker, a pioneer who traveled the Oregon Trail. Her technique was crisp and clean and feels contemporary despite her working nearly one hundred years ago. Much of her work, which has been a challenge to locate, concentrated on California and Southwest themes.

Crow became a fellow at The School of American Research in 1920 as a result of her fieldwork at San Ildefonso Pueblo and her work with Dr. Edward L. Hewitt, director of the Museum of New Mexico who also worked with renowned potters Maria and Julian Martinez.

In 1938, Crow was married briefly to writer Roy Keech in Santa Fe. After her divorce, she used the name Boyac, her maternal grandmother's name however, not professionally. Louise Crow died on July 26, 1968 in San Mateo, California.

Crow's exhibitions include the Oakland Museum, CA; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Salon d' Automne, Paris; Salons of America, New York; the Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe; and the Ainslee Galleries, New York, Artists of the Pacific Northwest, Seattle. She had solo shows at the Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe; the Museum of History and Industry and the Pioneer Hall, Seattle, and the Governor's Mansion, Olympia, Washington. 


_____________________________________________________________________________________________Sources
Independent Spirits, Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, Patricia Trenton, ed., University of California Press, 1995, p. 155, 159, 162-163, 169, 174.
An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1998, p. 61-62.
Women Artists of Santa Fe, Michael R. Grauer, Essay printed in Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, November 2004, http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/5aa/5aa92.htm.