Margaret Peterson: Berkeley Modernist

Portrait of Margaret Peterson
Curtis Lantinga
ca 1978

Painter and illustrator Margaret Peterson was born in Seattle in 1902. She moved to the San Francisco Bay area for her education and earned her Master of Arts degree at the University of California, Berkeley. When art historians discuss the Berkeley School, the art department at U.C. Berkeley, Margaret Peterson is the artist who seems to have best understood the theories of modern artist and teacher, Hans Hoffman. She began teaching at Berkeley in 1928, and held that position until 1950. Peterson became a self-described disciple of Cubism early in her career and is considered to be one of the “Berkeley Modernists” along with Worth Ryder, John Haley, and Erle Loran. Among her students were Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn and Jay DeFeo, artists important to the San Francisco abstractionist movement. 

Margaret PetersonFemale Nude 
ca 1932
Pen
19 1/8 x 13 9/16 inches
de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA

By the mid-1930s Peterson was working in an abstract style that was influenced by Braque as well as Mexican modernists Carlos Merida and Rufino Tamayo. She met both artists in Mexico City during her solo exhibition at the Biblioteca Nacional in 1934.

In an interview conducted by Paul J. Karlstrom, West Coast Regional Director of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Jay De Feo provides a vivid description of Margaret Peterson, her art instructor. De Feo claims Peterson believed that a painting not be a literary idea but a visual one. Her preferred media was not to paint with oil but to work on gessoed board using egg tempera. 

Margaret Peterson
Cover Illustration
ca 1977

Peterson married Howard O’Hagan, the Canadian writer famous for the novel Tay John. Published in 1939 and all but forgotten in the conflagration of WW II, despite being re-published in 1960, it did not receive its proper recognition until it was reprinted in the New Canadian Library in 1974. Margaret Peterson’s work became the cover art for The School-Marm Tree published in 1977 by Talonbooks in Vancouver.

Refusing to sign a loyalty oath during the McCarthy era, Peterson resigned from Berkeley and with her husband, left the country where they relocated to Victoria, British Columbia. Peterson had a solo exhibition with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in 1953, 1959, and 1978. In the mid 1960s and 1970s, Peterson was commissioned to develop glass and ceramic mosaics for the University of Victoria and the British Colombia Hydro Building there. 

Margaret Peterson
Head
ca 1956
Oil on Hardboard
25 x 18 15/16 inches

Margaret Peterson
The Gemini
ca 1959
Tempera on wood panel
Legacy Maltwood, Victoria, B.C.

Until the late 1940s, her inspiration was from Picasso. Deeply interested in spirituality and Peterson spent much of her life traveling the world exploring human spiritual belief and practice which became the basis for her work. She was particularly interested in the art and spiritual iconography of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest and of Central and South America. Peterson’s work in the late fifties into the early sixties displays her interest in both abstraction and native art. 

Margaret Peterson
The Birth of Fire
ca 1960
Tempera on wood panel
Legacy Maltwood, Victoria BC

Margaret Peterson
The Gods of Intertidal Waters
ca 1960
Termpera on wood panel
Legacy Maltwood, Victoria BC

Margaret Peterson died in Sidney, British Columbia on May 15, 1997. 

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Sources

de Young/Legion of Honor, Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, http://art.famsf.org/margaret-peterson/female-nude-19591184, retrieved February 23, 2015.

Brian Dedora, Margaret Peterson, http://briandedora.com/?p=2477, posted 2011, retrieved February 23, 2015.

Independent Spirits, Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945,  Patricia Trenton, ed, p.32

Preview, The Gallery Guide, Margaret Peterson: A Search in Rhythm, http://preview-art.com/previews/06-2014/peterson.html, retrieved February 23, 2015.

AskArt, Margaret O'Hagan Peterson, http://www.askart.com/askart/p/margaret_ohagan_peterson/margaret_ohagan_peterson.aspx?GUID=A367AE1A-99D6-4F9A-9C42-AA4E99B4D433, retrieved February 23, 2015.

Quilts of the Oregon Trail

I received a lovely email from Anita Williams, quilter and fellow blogger. Anita commented on one of my entries that discussed quilts and which included a bit of history and several examples of the wide variety that have been created over time. Inspired by Ms. Williams, (thank you) and since this is a blog about female artists working in the West, I'd like to share what information I've found about Quilts of the Oregon Trail.



The 2,200 mile long Oregon Trail beginning in Independence Missouri and ending in the Columbia River Valley

During eight decades in the 1800s the Oregon Trail served as a natural corridor as the United States moved from the eastern half of the continent toward the west coast. The Oregon Trail ran approximately 2,000 miles west from Missouri toward the Rocky Mountains to the Willamette Valley. A trail to California branched off in southern Idaho and the Mormon Trail paralleled much of the Oregon Trail, connecting Council Bluffs to Salt Lake City.

The trail began as an unconnected series of trails used by Native Americans. Fur Traders expanded the route to transport pelts to trading posts and to meet other traders. In the 1830s, missionaries followed the still faint trail along the Platte River and the Snake to establish church connections in the Northwest. In the 1840s, a combination of economic and political events converged to start a large scale migration west on what was then known as "The Oregon Road." Joel Walker is credited as the first settler to make the complete trip with a family, in 1840. Large scale migration began in 1843, when a wagon train of over 800 people with 120 wagons and 5,000 cattle made the five-month journey.


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Iconic Photograph of an unknown pioneer family
Caravan on the Oregon Trail

Then, in 1847, Mormons headed toward Salt Lake, and along with the discovery of gold in California in 1848, sent a wave of fortune seekers west. Military posts, trading posts, shortcuts, and spur roads emerged along the Oregon Trail over the next thirty years. The Central Pacific Railroad connected California to the rest of the continent in 1869, and the Oregon Short line completed a railroad from Portland, Oregon to the Union Pacific railroad in Wyoming in 1884. Modern transportation eclipsed travel by wagon train. The trail became a route for eastward cattle drives, but by the twentieth century, the Oregon Trail was considered part of a historic past, and the image of covered wagons and the pioneers had become a historical footnote.



We know that quilts were precious to pioneer women for a variety of reasons. They were indeed practical and comforting, but the quilts also kept them emotionally connected to their past. Women sometimes received them from friends and family as a friendship quilt that provided a memento of loved ones left behind. Leaving home for Oregon in 1852, Lodisa Frizzel wrote in her diary about the sadness of leaving home and later passing the graves of those pioneers who had died before them.
"Who does not recollect their first night when started on a long journey. The well known voices of our friends still ringing in our ears. The parting kiss still warm upon our lips and the last separating word 'farewell!' sinks deeply into the heart." (1852). Women also made quilts in anticipation of the journey. Names of quilt patterns can relate to the journey and/or to their faith. There are names that refer directly to the pioneer experience such as Rocky Road to Kansas, Road to California, and, of course, Oregon Trail.

Wandering Foot, Made on the Oregon Trail
Courtesy Douglas County Museum of History
Roseburg, Oregon

Quilts made by and for women who traveled the Trail between 1840 and 1870 are known as Oregon Trail quilts. Often made over the life of the journey which could last four to nine months, they can be considered quilts of migration. Many Oregon Trail quilts were meant to be kept as heirlooms; as narratives or visual records of their experiences on the journey. Those traditional quilts were made or given to acknowledge major events such as births, educational accomplishments, marriages, community involvement, and even death.

Wagon Wheels
Quilt made while traveling the Trail

The quilts that were brought on the trail were a comfort in times of anxiety and grief as there was so much loss during the course of the journey. We typically think of disease as being the primary cause of death during that time, but accidents were also a significant danger. Death could come by any means such as wagon mishaps, livestock stampedes, gunshot and unexpected encounters with snakes, wild animals, or encounters with Native Americans, in addition to storms, and tornadoes. Demise from disease like smallpox and cholera increased as the routes west became more crowded, and clean water in areas that received little rain became scarce. Jane D. Kellogg wrote, "There was an epidemic of cholera, think it was caused from drinking water from the holes dug by campers. All along was a graveyard most any time of day you could see people burying their dead. Some places five or six graves in a row. It was a sad sight. No one could realize it unless they had seen it." (1852)

Peony, Quilt made to accompany travelers
Courtesy Douglas County Museum of History
Roseburg, Oregon

Oregon Trail quilts reflected the influence of the West, the direct exposure to outdoor living, the elements of weather, and the impressions the women had of western landscape. Other themes were the reliance on equipment and divine guidance to see them safely through their journeys.

Piecing the trail to Kansas

Zeralda Carpenter Bones Stone, known as "Grandma Stone"
"Snail's Trail Quilt" made at age of 95 in 1908.
Stitched Signature
Willamette Heritage Center, Oregon



Zeralda Carpenter Bones Stone, known as "Grandma Stone"
"Snail's Trail Quilt" made at age of 95 in 1908.
Willamette Heritage Center, Oregon
  

The ruts of the Oregon Trail were up to six feet deep in some places along the trail and have been preserved as State Historic Sites. The land over which families traveled was incredibly unforgiving.


Oregon Trail, North Platte River, Gurnsey, Wyoming

A lonely stretch of the Oregon Trail

 For more tales of women and their experiences on the Oregon Trail, here are several books that will fascinate and educate:
Women's Voices from the Oregon Trail by Susan G. Butruille
Wagon Wheel Kitchens, Food on the Oregon Trail by Jacqueline Williams
Wagon Wheels and Wild Roses, Heirloom recipes and Oregon trail stories from the McCaw family, 1847-1995 by Naomi Stanley Kulp
Treasures in the Trunk, Quilts of the Oregon Trail by Mary Bywater Cross
                                
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Sources
Judy Ann Johnson Brenman, Womenfolk.com, Quilt Notes,  http://www.womenfolk.com/quilt_notes/oregontrail.htm
Mary Bywater Cross, Quilts of the Oregon Trail, Schiffer Books, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2015.
The Oregon Encyclopedia, Oregon Trail Quilts, Mary Bywater Cross, http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/oregon_trail_quilts/#.VNPIPaPTncs. Retrieved February 5, 2015.
Anita Williams, Granny Anita's Quilting Diary, http://www.grannyanitalovesquilting.net/are-you-a-paper-piecer/
Kansas Troubles Quilters, http://www.ktquilts.com/shop/Quilters-Journals/p/KansasOregon-Quilt-Connection-sku-QJ-400.htm, Retrieved February 5, 2015.
Triumph and Tragedy, Women's Voices from the Oregon Trail, Oregon Public Radio, http://www.opb.org/programs/womensvoices/women.html, Retrieved February 6, 2015.
U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Basic Facts about the Oregon Trail, http://www.blm.gov/or/oregontrail/history-basics.php, Retrieved February 6, 2015.

Gladys Caldwell Fisher: Sculptor and Animalier

I'm continually surprised at the numbers of female artists I discover whose names are virtually unknown beyond their local fame. That is my motivation-their work is beautiful, professional, and deserves to be re-visited so....



Gladys Caldwell Fisher
American Indian Orpheus and the Animals
ca 1934
Stone Relief
Denver City and County Building
Denver, Colorado

Born in Loveland, Colorado, Gladys Caldwell Fisher's family moved to Denver in 1917 when she was eleven years old. Gladys had an interest in sculpture from the time she was a child. While she attended Manual and East High Schools from 1921-1925, she joined the Beaux Arts Atelier, Denver at the suggestion of local, professional artists. After her third year at the atelier, she received a scholarship from the Denver Allied Arts in 1926, allowing her to study sculpture for a year at the American School of Architecture in New York under Alexander Archipenko. Afterward, she spent a summer in sculpture and ceramic classes in Woodstock, New York. She used a second Denver Allied Arts scholarship to study in Paris with Antoine Bourdelle at the Econle de las Grande Chaumiere and also learned under sculptors Jose de Creeft, George Hilbert, and Aristide Maillol.

After she returned to the United States in 1929, Fisher did freelance work in New York and in 1932, returned to Denver. Four years later she married architect Alan Berney Fisher. While raising a family, she continued to pursue her career and she taught art at Denver University and the Denver Art Museum.


Gladys Caldwell Fisher
Model of Boulder Dam
ca 1935
Cast aluminum
19.5 w x 14 d x 7 h inches

Gladys' love of animals was evident throughout her life and she spent quite a bit of time observing them in their natural habitat. Two of her Rocky Mountain sheep sculptures installed in 1936 at the main Denver post office, weighed ten tons each and were carved from limestone. The sculptures were the result of winning a federal competition to produce sculptures for the Denver Post Office. To begin her work, Gladys spent time in Yellowstone observing sheep in their natural habitat.


Gladys Caldwell Fisher

          Rocky Mountain Sheep" and White Ram

ca 1936

      Indiana limestone

        Byron White U.S. Courthouse

Fisher modeled a pair of grizzly bear cubs for the Yellowstone Park post office at Mammoth Hot Springs, a federal commission she completed in 1941. Her depiction of the cubs was somewhat controversial because of her abstracted style which was influenced by her study with Alexander Archipenko. Other subjects of her work included bobcats, fawns and burros.


Gladys Caldwell Fisher
Young Grizzly Bears
ca 1941
Stone
Yellowstone National Park Post Office

Fisher exhibited widely including the Paris Salon, Society of Independent Artists, the Denver Art Museum, Colorado Fine Arts Center, and the Syracuse, New York Museum of Fine Arts. Her work can also be found at the Special Collections Library, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, Denver Art Museum, the Denver Public Library and at the City and County Building in Denver.

Gladys Caldwell Fisher
Sandy and Johnny
ca n.d.
Charcoal
11 1/8 x 10 1/8 inches

Gladys Caldwell Fisher died on April 18, 1952 in Denver, Colorado.

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Sources
An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, 1998, pp 93-94
Public Art Archive, Gladys Caldwell Fisher, http://www.publicartarchive.org/work/american-indian-orpheus-and-animals, retrieved January 23, 2015
Peter Hassrick, "Drawn to Yellowstone"
New Deal Art Registry, http://www.newdealartregistry.org/artist/FishergladysCaldwell/, retrieved January 23, 2015
Best of the West Auctions, Gladys Caldwell Fisher, Colorado Springs, CO, retrieved January 23, 2015

Mabel Dodge Luhan: Patron of the Arts, Writer, and Muse of Taos

Mabel Dodge Luhan
1879 – 1962
ca. 1934
Carl van Vechten, Photographer
 

Most of my blog entries have been about specific female artists with a bit of history tossed in to allow for a greater understanding of the particular challenges faced by women, as they strove to create lives of purpose.

Mabel Dodge Luhan was less a visual artist but a writer whose account of her own complex life experiences, including her eventual self-healing in New Mexico, ran to four volumes. She was a force, a unique woman of profound contradictions; mercurial, domineering, generous, and endearing.

Luhan was born Mabel Ganson to society couple Charles Ganson and Sarah Cook. The Gansons lived in a Victorian mansion on Delaware Avenue in Buffalo, New York. Buffalo mirrored the prosperity and power of the growing United States during the Gilded Age. The Gansons, who spent lavishly on their daughter, neglected her emotional needs. Her father had a violent and unpredictable temper and her mother, while decisive and strong, was not warm. Mabel grew up in a family and in a society that placed value on appearances and a lack of purpose... she was raised to charm and groomed to marry. Luhan, however, was a Victorian woman who rejected the constraints and expectations of what a woman was supposed to be. She became a symbol of the "New Woman:" self-determining, emancipated, and publicly opinionated about art, society and politics.

Her first of four marriages at the age of 21 occurred in 1900 when she wed Karl Evans, son of a steamship owner. Mabel and Karl had one son, John. When Karl died in a hunting accident two-and-half years later, he left her a widow at the age of 23. Mabel was sent by her family to Paris because she was having an affair with a prominent Buffalo physician however, just later that year she met and married wealthy architect Edwin Dodge. It was a marriage of convenience for Mabel as she needed financial support and a father figure for her son.

Photo of Mabel and her son John in the Gran Salone,
Villa Curonia, Florence, Italy

The Dodges settled in Florence, Italy at the Villa Curonia in Arcetri, a region in the hills to the south of the city center. Between 1905 and 1912, Mabel entertained local artists, expats and visitors such as Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo, Alice B. Toklas, and French author and Nobel Prize winner André Gide. Bored with her life in Florence by 1912 and greatly influenced by Gertrude and Leo Stein's philosophy that the individual could overcome the ill effects of both heredity and environment and create herself anew, Mabel returned to New York.
Mabel Dodge's friend, Bertram D. Wolfe, founder of the American Communist Party and biographer, later recalled: "Wealthy, gracious, open-hearted, beautiful, intellectually curious, and quite without a sense of discrimination, she was Bohemia's most successful lion-hunter." Her apartment in New York City became a salon, a place where intellectuals and artists such John Reed, Lincoln Steffens, Margaret Sanger, Louise Bryant, Emma Goldman, Frances Perkins, Carl Van Vechten and Amy Lowell would meet.


Thornton Wilder Soiree, Mabel Dodge’s Greenwich Village salon
n.d.
Mabel Dodge Luhan Papers

In his book, Autobiography (1931), Lincoln Steffens claimed: "... Mabel Dodge managed her evenings, and no one felt that they were managed. She sat quietly in a great armchair and rarely said a word; her guests did the talking, and with such a variety of guests, her success was amazing."

Dodge was involved with one of the most important exhibitions of the Twentieth Century, the Armory Show of European Modern Art in 1913, and she published in pamphlet from a piece by Gertrude Stein, "Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia" which Dodge distributed at the exhibition. She contributed to The Masses, the leading left-wing literary and political journal of her day; wrote a syndicated newspaper column popularizing Freudian psychology; and supported a host of organizations, among them the Women's Peace Party, the Heterodoxy Club, the Women's Birth Control League, and the Twilight Sleep Association. She also published articles in leading modernist literary and art magazines such as The Dial, and Stieglitz' photographic magazine, Camera Work.

In 1916, Mabel and her third husband, artist and sculptor Maurice Sterne, moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, but found it too confining so they relocated to Taos. The 600-year-old Pueblo culture provided a model of permanence and stability; a total integration of personality achieved through the organic connection of work, play, community, and environment. She soon fell in love with Tony Lujan, a Pueblo Native American. She quickly divorced Sterne and wed Lujan, her fourth and final husband. Mabel viewed their alliance as a bridge between Anglo and Native American cultures but changed the spelling of her last name (Lujan to Luhan) to allow for an easier pronunciation.

Tony Lujan of Taos Pueblo, New Mexico
 ca. 1930
 Ansel Adams

In the 1920s, Luhan wrote her four-volume memoirs: Intimate Memories (1933), Background, European Experiences (1935), Movers and Shakers (1936), and Edge of Taos Desert (1937). She wrote a number of articles on behalf of the integrity of Native American culture, health, and the protection of tribal lands. She remained, as one reporter described her in the early 1920s, "the most peculiar common denominator that society, literature, art, and radical revolutionaries ever found in New York and Europe." In attempting to alter the direction of American civilization, she captured the imaginations of her generation's most talented writers, artists, and thinkers, and profoundly influenced their understanding of modern America.

Mabel Dodge Luhan House
 also known as Big House and St. Teresa House
 Taos, New Mexico
Declared a National Historic Landmark in 1991 

Luhan also wrote Winter in Taos (1935) and Taos and Its Artists (1947), a leading overview of the painters and sculptors from the art colony founders through the modernists of the 1940s. Up through the early 1950s, Mabel continued to produce the occasional newspaper and magazine article, many of which were dedicated to the history and culture of Taos.

Mabel Dodge Luhan, Frieda Lawrence,
and Brett at Kiowa Ranch
  ca. 1938
Mabel Dodge Luhan Papers

Mabel Dodge Lujan died in Taos, New Mexico, on April 18th, 1962.

^{________________________________________________________________________________________
Sources
Taos.org, Look and Book,  Mabel Dodge Luhan, http://taos.org/women/profiles-legends?/item/78/Mabel-Dodge-Luhan, retrieved January 7, 2015.
The Muse of Taos, Stirring Still, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/16/garden/the-muse-of-taos-stirring-still.html, retrieved January 8, 2015
Women Artists of the American West, Susan R. Ressler, ed., McFarland and Publishers, Inc. Philadelphia, p. 85-86.
Spartacus Educational, Mabel Dodge, http://spartacus-educational.com/USAdodge.htm, retrieved January 8, 2014.
Mabel Dodge Luhan, Encyclopedia.com, http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Mabel_Dodge_Luhan.aspx, retrieved January 8, 2015.
New Mexico History.org, Mabel Dodge Luhan, http://newmexicohistory.org/people/mabel-dodge-luhan, retrieved January 8, 2015.}

Annita Delano: Artist and Founding Member of Art Faculty at UCLA

Annita Delano
ca. 1937
Graffito mural 4 x 7 feet
 for Dr. H.F. Ray- Housed in Oxnard, Calif.

"Delano was perhaps the local woman artist most abreast of modernist currents. Delano's modernism informed her teaching, especially her courses on design and architecture. Delano displays an awareness of the centrality of architecture and design, arguably California's greatest contribution to the unfolding of modernism in America." In addition, "Annita Delano was instrumental" in promoting the Blue Four. Delano helped friend Galka Scheyer "present several shows in the late 1920s at the Southern Branch campus of the University of California and through these exhibitions Californians could examine firsthand Feininger's Cubist paintings and Kandinsky's early spiritual abstractions, as well as the late nonobjective Bauhaus compositions."

Annita Delano's impact was felt simultaneously on several fronts: Delano the artist, Delano the art professor at the Southern Branch of the University of California (now the University of California, Los Angeles), and Delano as founder of the art department of UCLA and curator of the University's art museum.

Annita Delano (1894-1979) was born in Hueneme, California, on October 2, 1894. She attended elementary school in Los Angeles and later her family moved to Terra Bella, California, where she graduated from Porterville Union High School in 1914 as her class valedictorian. Delano enrolled in the art program at the Los Angeles Normal School before she began her career as Professor of Art in 1920.

In March 1881, after heavy lobbying by Los Angeles residents, the California State Legislature authorized the creation of a southern branch of the California State Normal School (which later became San Jose State University) in downtown Los Angeles to train teachers for the growing population of Southern California. The State Normal School at Los Angeles opened on August 29, 1882, on what is now the site of the Central Library of the Los Angeles Public Library system. Its curriculum, with a national reputation, included stagecraft, drawing, painting, life drawing, history of art, design, graphic arts, and crafts. In the latter part of the 1920s, the school was represented by an exhibition of student work at an international art conference in Vienna, Austria. Annita represented the Art Department for the University.


Annita Delano
A strip of four portrait photos of Annita Delano as a young woman,
ca. 1915.

Delano received training in art and art history from Columbia University, University of California at Berkeley and the Otis Art Institute, as well as in the studios of noted individual artists such as Dixon Morgan and Norman Bel Geddes. She spent two years conducting research with the Barnes Foundation, which provided a scholarship for a four-month research trip to Europe during 1930-1931. This trip brought her in contact with modern French masters and accelerated her development toward her own personal expression. During this period of research she spent time with Bauhaus faculty as well as with architects Richard Neutra and Josef Albers and the artist Anni Albers.


Annita Delano painting at Gallup, New
Mexico, 1934. Annita Delano papers, Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Annita Delano was a founding member of the UCLA Art Department where she taught courses in fine art, art history and applied design. Her own paintings were widely exhibited, as part of group shows and in solo exhibitions of her work. Delano was a key figure in the development of the art world of Southern California and she was a member of a number of organizations including the California Watercolor Society and the Los Angeles Art Association.

Delano’s annual camping and painting trips include 28 summers to Arizona and New Mexico, beginning in the late 1920s. She recalled she would spend three months painting, camping and exploring each summer, living among the Hopi, Navajo, and Zuni Indians. Her artistic works were especially inspired by the landscapes of the Southwest and the Native American peoples of the region. She often attended the annual Intertribal Indian Ceremonial Gathering in Gallup, New Mexico, a large ceremonial gathering that first took place in 1922 and continues to this day.

Annita Delano
Canon Valley Landscape
ca. N.D.
Watercolor
30 x 21 1/4 inches

After her first solo exhibition in San Francisco and Fresno in 1929, Delano had thirty solo shows and participated in numerous exhibitions across the country, most of them in the western region of the United States. She was honored with a prestigious show at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, and an exhibition of work by living artists in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1940s, at a time when such exhibitions were not customary. After her retirement, Delano continued to paint and held three major exhibitions in California: the Cee Jee Gallery, Los Angeles, the Zara Gallery in San Francisco, and the Santa Monica Gallery, Santa Monica. 

 

Annita Delano
Roaring Green Lion With Chuckling Monkeys
ca. 1950
Watercolor on heavy textured rag paper
28 x 22 inches
 



Annita Delano
Cloud Shadows in The Grand Canyon,
 ca 1955
Oil on Canvas,
50 x 39 inches

Annita Delano spent forty-two years at UCLA, where she taught until she retired in 1962. She was critical to the growth and development of the art department into the professional school of the arts that it is at the University today. She never married and remained an independent woman for her entire life. Delano continued to paint until her death in 1979 at the age of 85.

__________________________________________________________________
Sources
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Research Collections, Image Gallery, Annita Delano, 1937, http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/viewer/anita-delano-6314, retrieved December 28, 2014.
Hamilton, Andrew (2004-06-18). "(UC) Los Angeles: Historical Overview". University of California History, Digital Archives (from Berkeley). Retrieved 2006-06-20.
Calisphere, University of California, Annita Delano, Art: Los Angeles, http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb1j49n6pv;NAAN=13030&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00024&toc.depth=1&toc.id=&brand=calisphere, retrieved December 28, 2014.
Independent Spirits, Woman Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, edited by Patricia Trenton, University of California Press 1995 at page 77. Independent Spirits at page 99.
Artists of the American West, Volume II by Doris Ostrander Dawdy , Sage / Swallow Press, 1981 at 78.  Independent Spirits at page 99.
On the Edge of America, California Modernist Art 1900-1950, edited by Paul J. Karlstrom, University of California Press, 1996 in association with the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.
Karlstrom at page 10. Independent Spirits at page 96 from interview with James V. Mink, 1971, Oral History Program, UCLA.
Independent Spirits at page 80 from interview with Delano's niece.

Mary Huntoon: Artist and Pioneer Art Therapist



Mary Huntoon
1896-1970
unknown photographer,
 Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library,
Topeka, KS, USA

Mary Huntoon was among the most innovative of Topeka's artists. Born Mary Huntoon Atkinson, she was the daughter of Ruth Huntoon Atkinson and Franklin Henry Atkinson and the descendent of prominent Topeka pioneer, Joel Huntoon. Huntoon spent six years of her childhood on the cattle ranch of her grandfather, Fred Huntoon, in Beaver County (No Man's Land), Oklahoma. At age twelve, she was rechristened Mary Huntoon Parsons and adopted by her mother's second husband, Harvey Greely Parsons.

Huntoon was inspired to develop her artistic ability by her stepfather, Harvey Parsons, a cartoonist and columnist in Topeka. Huntoon’s academic training began at Washburn University where she earned her degree in art in 1920. Huntoon studied with internationally-known portraitist and founder of the art school at Washburn, Kansas artist George M. Stone. She continued her studies at The Art Students League in New York, and grew as an artist under instructors Robert Henri, George Bridgman, Frank Vincent Du Mond, and Joseph Pennell. Pennell persuaded her to travel to Paris where she reputedly introduced Stanley Hayter to printmaking techniques. Living in the Latin Quarter for five years, Huntoon sketched the buildings, people, and surrounding city scenes in which she lived. Her works were exhibited in the Salon d’Automne of 1929, as well as at the Salon des Indépendants.  Huntoon's first one-artist show was in Paris at the Galerie Sacre du Printemps in 1929.


Mary Huntoon
Momus
ca 1928
Etching



Mary Huntoon
Along the Paris Quay
ca 1931
Etching
8 1/2 x 11 inches



Mary Huntoon
Tower
ca n.d.
Pencil
 7 x 8.25 inches

Despite these distinguished connections, Huntoon’s gender seemed to be a detriment. Under an assumed name, Huntoon's husband, a former reporter, mocked a reviewer's praise of her work in a letter to the editor of a Paris newspaper. He stated that "No women (sic) has distinguished herself in 5,000 years and it is a little too late to begin to hope." Public outcry at this misogynistic rant prompted record crowds at the exhibition, which was exactly the intended effect.
 Huntoon returned to Topeka in 1934 where she taught at her alma mater, Washburn College. She became state supervisor for the WPA Federal Art Project in Kansas from 1934-1938. In later years, Huntoon directed programs for the Menninger Foundation and later for the Winter Veterans Hospital becoming a pioneer in the field of art therapy from the 1930s through the 1950s. Huntoon carried out research in art therapy while she was employed at Winter V.A. Hospital and wrote several articles on the subject which were published. Huntoon believed in the power of art to heal, and encouraged her patients, whom she called "students," to engage with materials in a studio setting without external disruption. She devoted 16 years of her career to working with psychiatric patients and World War II veterans through art.  

Mary Huntoon
Fishing Shacks Marquette Michigan
ca n.d.
Oil on canvas
18 x 15 inches

Mary Huntoon
Poet's House
ca n.d.
Oil on canvas board
13 x 15 inches

 

Mary Huntoon
They Dreamed of Many Mansions
ca 1947
Etching
8 x 10 3/4 inches

 

Huntoon was married to Charles Hoyt (1920-29), Lester Hull (1933-37), Erwin Seaman (1945-1956) and Willis McEntarfar (1957-70). Mary Huntoon was a female artist with talent in a wide array of media. In addition, she was an art therapist, an author, a director (administrator), educator, lecturer, teacher, and intrepid traveler. She contributed art work to many exhibitions, won numerous awards, and her paintings and etchings are permanently displayed in the Topeka Public Library, Washburn University, the Salina Art Association, the Philadelphia Art Museum, and numerous public buildings across the state of Kansas.  __________________________________________________________________________

Sources:

Bernard O. Stone, "A Historical Review: Mary Huntoon's Far Reaching Influence on the Field of Art Psychotherapy" (unpublished manuscript, Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library files).

Mutual Art, Mary Huntoon, http://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Mary-Huntoon/D7590BBB283DDC24/Artworks, retrieved December 19, 2014.

AskArt, The Artist's Bluebook,  Mary Huntoon, http://www.askart.com/askart/artist.aspx?artist=105829, retrieved December 19, 2014.

Art Therapy: The Journal of Art Therapy, Looking for What's Lost: The Artistic Roots of Art Therapy: Mary Huntoon, Linney Wix, MeD, ATR, Published online: 22 Apr 2011.

Patricia Trenton, Ed., Independent Spirits, Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, University of California Press, p. 271.

Clara, Database of Women Artists, Mary Huntoon, http://clara.nmwa.org/index.php?g=entity_detail&entity_id=11280.

The University of Kansas Libraries, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, Guide to the Mary Huntoon Collection, Mary Huntoon Papers, 1876-1970, http://etext.ku.edu/view?docId=ksrlead/ksrl.kc.huntoonmarypapers.xml, retrieved December 19, 2014.

Elizabeth Ann Cooper: Seattle Modernist Painter

Elizabeth Ann Cooper
Untitled Cubist Self-Portrait
ca 1930s
Oil on canvas
 Martin-Zambito Fine Art

Elizabeth Ann Cooper was a highly regarded Modernist painter who worked in Seattle during the 1920s and 30s. One of the early members of the Women Painters of Washington organization, Cooper exhibited with WPW. She participated in the Northwest Annuals at the Seattle Art Institute and the Seattle Art Museum as well.

Women Painters of Washington (WPW) began as one of the earliest arts organizations in the Pacific Northwest and remains among the few statewide women’s arts associations in the United States. The group formed in 1930 after several of the prominent regional women artists attended a class conducted in Seattle by the Canadian painter Frederick Horsman Varley (1881-1969). They were dedicated to exploring modern art techniques.  In 1937, the group produced a catalogue booklet that included their biographies and artistic statements, as well as illustrations of their work

Elizabeth Cooper was born in Nottingham, England. She emigrated to the United States and attended the Mark Hopkins Art Institute in San Francisco (now the San Francisco Art Institute). Cooper moved to Seattle in the early 1920s where she was a student at the University of Washington and studied with Walter Isaacs, Eugenie Worman, and others. 

Elizabeth Ann Cooper
Untitled Still-Life with Flowers
ca 1930s
Oil on canvas
 Martin-Zambito Fine Art

Cooper was a member of the prominent Group of Twelve, Modernist artists in Seattle that included some of the major regional painters of the period such as Morris Graves, Ambrose Patterson, and Kenneth Callahan.  Cooper was inspired by modern movements in art, including the European Post-Impressionists, Cubists, and the German Expressionists. She produced some of the most daring and progressive regional art of the period.

 In her own words:
"Aims: To interpret rather than represent, to achieve good composition, that is, fine arrangement of line, mass and color, irrespective of subject matter or emotional appeal. To stimulate in others, appreciation and understanding of the aims of modern painters, who, by individual technique, endeavor to interpret life and to communicate their aesthetic experience.."



Elizabeth Ann Cooper
Untitled Two Heads
ca 1930s
Oil on canvas
 Martin-Zambito Fine Art

Elizabeth Cooper, like so many female artists, raised two children and balanced family life while creating art. In middle age, she continued to work until her untimely death in 1936. Cooper asserted that "…Art creation is not the exclusive domain of youth. Middle age and old age find in creative art a wellspring of eternal youth. Renoir, in his eighties, did his best work. Art, like mercy, is twice blessed; it blesseth him who gives and him who takes.."

Elizabeth Ann Cooper
San Francisco Street
ca 1930s
Watercolor on paper
 J. Franklin Fine Art, Inc.

_________________________________________________________
Sources
1. An Enduring Legacy,Women Painters of Washington, 1930-2005, Whatcom Museum of History and Art, Bellingham, Washington, University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA, 2005, p. 65.
2. Elizabeth Ann Cooper, 1877-1936, http://www.womenpainters.com/75th/COOPER/Cooper.html, retrieved 12/4/2014.
4. AskArt: The Artist's Bluebook, Elizabeth Ann Cooper, http://www.askart.com/askart/artists/search/inquiry.aspx?artist=5011313&ad=160632&searchtype=ART_FOR_SALE, retrieved 12/4/2014.
5. Women Painters of Washington, http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=7644, retrieved 12/4/2014.