Anna Althea Hills: Early American Impressionist

Anna Althea Hills

Anna Althea Hills  was an American Plein-air painter who specialized in impressionist landscapes of the Southern California coast. Hills is best known for her lovely landscape, marine, genre, and figure painting. 

Anna Hills was born in Ravenna, Ohio on January 28, 1882. Hills, daughter of a minister, moved frequently with her family due to her father's occupation. She lived in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, where her mother passed away when she was only four years old, Olivet Michigan, Springfield, Illinois, and in Oberlin, Ohio. 

As a teenager, Hills explored her passion for painting. She attended Olivet College, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City from which she graduated in 1908. Hills continued her studies privately with Arthur Dow and Rhoda Holmes Nichols in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Hills won awards for her work in watercolor (1905) and oil painting and still life (1906). Hills traveled abroad for four years, studying in England with John Noble Barlow, and in 1908, attended the Academie Julian in Paris.

Anna Althea Hills
painting En plein air

In 1913, at thirty-one years old, Anna Hills returned to the United States. She moved to Los Angeles and changed her artistic focus from painting interior figures using the darker, tonalist style in which she was trained, to creating lighter and brighter impressionist landscapes in a higher chromatic range. Hills settled in Laguna Beach, California that same year where she opened a studio in which she worked and taught in the Plein-air tradition. A highly respected teacher, Hills promoted the visual arts through lectures and the organization of special exhibits, which circulated among Orange County public schools. Hills was inspired by the landscapes of the West with its coastal views, deserts, arroyos and mountains and was often seen painting on the hills above the coast of Laguna Beach.

Hills was also known for her community activism. She was involved with the Presbyterian church and ran the Sunday school. Hills was an active member of the California Art Club and held a membership at the Washington Watercolor club. She won the Bronze Medal at the Panama-California Exposition held in San Diego in 1915, the Bronze Medal at the California State Fair, Sacramento, California, in 1919, and received the Landscape Prize at the Laguna Beach Art Association in 1922 and 1923. Hills was president of the Laguna Beach Art Association for six years and, as president, it was Hills' advocacy that led to founding the Laguna Beach Art Museum there in 1929. 

Anna Althea Hills
By the Roadside Near El Torro
ca 1914
14 x 11 inches
Oil on canvas

Anna Althea Hills
California Hills
ca n.d.
7 x 10 inches
Oil on canvas board

Solo shows included the Kanst Galleries in Los Angeles, the Fern Buford Galleries in Laguna Beach. Forty-four years after her death, the Laguna Beach Art Association sponsored an exhibition of her work in 1974. Her paintings hang in the Laguna Art Musuem, the Irvine Musuem, Irvine, California, the Fleisher Museum of Russian and California Impressionism in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, California.

Anna Althea Hills
Laguna Canyon Road
ca 1912
Oil on canvas
Anna Hills Gallery of Art

Anna Althea Hills
Springtime, Banning, California
ca 1916
Oil on paper/board10 x 14 inches

Private Collection, Courtesy of The Irvine Museum

Hills loved the desert, staying often during the winter months at places such as Banning and Hemet, located near Palm Springs, from which she made sketching treks into the surrounding country. Sadly, Hills passed away on June 13, 1930 in Laguna Beach, California at the age of forty-eight. 

________________________________________

Sources
An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marion Yoshiki Kovinick, University of Texas Press, 1998, p. 142-143.
Independent Spirits, Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, Patricia Trenton, ed., University of California Press, 1995, pp. 68.
The Irvine Museum, Essay, Peaceful Awakening: Springtime in California, January 20-May 12, 2007, http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/7aa/7aa55.htm, retrieved September 11, 2015.
Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery Monthly, http://www.bodegabayheritagegallery.com/Hills_Anna.htm, retrieved September 11, 2015.
Anna Hills Gallery, Anna Althea Hills Biography American Impressionist, http://www.annahillspaintingexpert.com/anna-althea-hills-biography/, retrieved September 11, 2015.

Atlanta, Georgia

It's been a busy summer, now it's time to get organized and back to routine. My husband, Howard, attended a convention in Atlanta, Georgia, in July (YES, in the summer) and I was able to go along for the ride. We just fell in love with the area and its history. Howard, and I stayed downtown and did not bother to rent a car-we were able to get nearly everywhere we wanted to go on Atlanta's efficient public transportation system. Our no-humidity selves from Southern California were overwhelmed by Georgia's summer climate, but with a lot of water and air conditioned destinations, we enjoyed what Atlanta had to offer.

Atlanta History Center

For lovers of history, I heartily recommend the Atlanta History Center, located in the city's historic Buckhead district, http://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/, and its exhibition on the Civil War. Presented chronologically year by year, the exhibit addressed what the intentions were of both the Confederate and the Union forces in each battle, and the final outcome. It was fascinating. The artifacts and weaponry really provided a sobering view of a devastating time in American history.

The Swan House
ca 1928

The grounds of the Atlanta History Center are wooded and lovely. Several structures, such as the Swan House, Smith Family Farm, and the Wood Family Cabin, allowed a peek into the lives of local Georgians from the earliest settlements in the area up to the 1930s. The Swan House, traditionally known as one of the most recognized and photographed landmarks in Atlanta, is an elegant, classically styled mansion built in 1928 for the Edward H. Inman family, heirs to a cotton brokerage fortune. In popular culture, it was one of many Georgia set locations used during the filming of the movie The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. 

Tullie Smith House
Smith Family Farm
ca 1840s

The Smith Family Farm includes the Tullie Smith House, a plantation-plain house built in the 1840s by the Robert Smith family. Originally located east of Atlanta, outside the city limits, the house survived the destruction in and around Atlanta during the Civil War. The house and detached kitchen were moved to the Atlanta History Center in the early 1970s and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Margaret Mitchell

Gone With the Wind! It was written in Atlanta and the film's World Premiere was held there in December 1939. We visited the Margaret Mitchell House and took an apartment tour where Mitchell penned the novel. Writer, playwright, and philanthropist, Margaret Mitchell was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Gone with the Wind. The tale was made into an equally famous motion picture starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. An adjacent building on the grounds featured an exhibit entitled The Making of a Film Legend which chronicled the transformation of the novel into a film. Sadly, Mitchell died from injuries after being struck by a speeding car when she was just 49 years old.

Margaret Mitchell House
990 Peachtree St NE
Atlanta, Georgia

Food-yes, Atlanta has it. We loved the Southern charm and hospitality found in Georgia. Had to find some touristy restaurants and our favorite was Pitty Pat's Porch (http://www.pittypatsrestaurant.com/) named after Scarlett O'Hara's aunt in Gone with the Wind. The restaurant was walking distance from our hotel right downtown and features southern food such as mint juleps, fried chicken with mashed 'taters' and gravy, topped off with hot peach cobbler...only on vacation, yum!

Since this is a blog about female artists working in the west, and at one time, Atlanta was a frontier, I must mention the art scene. It is lively. The High Museum of Art, Atlanta is a wonderful venue for an eclectic collection that includes the Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith to photography by Brett Weston, son of legendary photographer Edward Weston. Howard and I played in the interactive Los Tropos or Spinning Tops at the museum through November 29th. The colorful "tops" are found on the museum grounds where one can sit and/or spin, listen to music and enjoy performances every first and third Friday.

Los Tropos
High Museum of Art
Atlanta, Georgia

Welcome to Central Park, Atlanta. Centennial Olympic Park is a 21-acre public park located in downtown Atlanta, owned and operated by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority. The park was built by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games as part of the improvements for the Centennial 1996 Summer Olympics. Millions of visitors a year visit the park and events, including a summer popular music concert series (Wednesday WindDown) and an annual Independence Day concert and fireworks display bring in tourists and locals alike.

Centennial Park
Atlanta, Georgia

I hope you've enjoyed your trip to Atlanta as much as we did. We're looking forward to returning sometime soon to explore what we missed! Until next time, Bye, y'all.

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.

Coreen Mary Spellman: Printmaker, Painter, and Professor of Art

Coreen Mary Spellman

Coreen Mary Spellman, printmaker, painter, and teacher, was born on March 17, 1905, in Forney, Texas, the second of six children of Michael and Carrie (Huffines) Spellman. Her father was a well-to-do Irish farmer and banker. Interested in art from an early age, her parents, neither of whom were artistically inclined, nurtured Coreen's talent. By the time she entered adolescence, her father was driving her to Dallas, which was twenty miles east of Forney, for weekly art lessons. Spellman majored in costume design at the Texas State College for Women in Denton (later Texas Woman's University), where she earned her bachelor of science degree in 1925. She received a master's degree in art from the Teachers' College at Columbia University in 1926. Spellman took art history and museum classes at Harvard University on a Carnegie Summer Scholarship in 1927 and from 1928 to 1929 attended the Art Students League in New York City, where she studied with notables Charles Locke, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and Vyclav Vytlacil. After her year at the Art Students League, Spellman accepted a post in the art department at Texas State College for Women in Denton, where she taught until her retirement in 1974. She continued her art studies in summer classes with Carlos Merida (1932), Charles J. Martin (1933), and Eliot O'Hara (1936) and at the University of Colorado. She attended the University of Iowa from 1941 to 1942, where she earned a master of fine arts degree.

Coreen Mary Spellman
Adobe for Sale
ca. n.d.
Watercolor
15 x 21 inches

Spellman was a versatile artist, skilled in watercolor, etching, aquatint, mezzotint and was especially adept in lithography. She studied watercolor techniques with Chales Martin in Provincetown cand credits him with a masterful understanding of composition, apparent in her work. Her realistic style was suited to represent urban scenes, southwestern landscapes, and portraits. Her work demonstrates her interest in realism, precisionism and abstraction. 

Coreen Mary Spellman
Railroad Signal
ca. 1936
Oil on beaverboard
20 x 16 inches
Collection of Bill and Mary Cheek

Coreen Mary Spellman
Road Signs
ca. 1936
Oil on canvas
 28 1/4 × 36 1/4 inches
Dallas Museum of Art

Many of Spellman's compositions are characterized by a spare, grid-like geometry-an observation of man-made silent industrialism which included both interior scenes and landscapes.

Coreen Mary Spellman
Sun on the Kitchen Floor
ca. 1947
Lithograph
8 3/8 x 4 7/8 inches
Dallas Museum of Art

Coreen Mary Spellman
Krum Weighing Station, Krumca. 
ca. 1947
Lithograph
14 3/8 x 10 1/8 inches
Dallas Museum of Art

Coreen Spellman exhibited her work extensively throughout the Southwest and in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and New York. She won many prizes in competitive exhibitions. In 1932 the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (now the Dallas Museum of Art) mounted her first solo exhibition, which was the first of more than thirteen solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Witte Museum in San Antonio (1933), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1933), the Santa Fe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico (1949), New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico (1949), and the Elisabet Ney Museum in Austin (1950). 

Coreen Mary Spellman
Nudeca. 
ca. 1929
Lithograph
 6 x 9 inches
Dallas Museum of Art

In 1932 one of Spellman's lithographs, Nude, was selected by the Society of Graphic Arts as one of the fifty best prints of the year, and in 1936 the American Artists Congress selected one of her mezzotints for inclusion in an exhibition of contemporary American prints that was held simultaneously in thirty cities in the United States. Her work was also represented in American Prize Prints of the 20th Century (1949).

Coreen Mary Spellman
Boats on the Lakeca. 
ca. 1959
Watercolor
 14 x 21 inches

Spellman was one of eight founding members of the Printmakers Guild (later the Texas Printmakers), a group of printmakers, originally all women, who proposed to inform the public about printmaking and give female printmakers an opportunity to show and sell their work through annual circulating print exhibitions. Spellman was active in the group, serving as president in 1946, until it disbanded in 1965. She was also a member of the Southern States Art League, Denton Art League, Delta Phi Delta,Delta Kappa Gamma Society, Associated Art Instructors of Texas, and National Women's Teacher Association. In addition to her teaching, exhibition, and club activities, Spellman lectured, illustrated books and pamphlets, and traveled extensively. For many summers she taught in New Mexico although she remained a resident of Denton. Spellman retired from Texas Woman's University in 1974. She died on October 15, 1978, and was honored posthumously by a portfolio of twelve lithographs assembled by the National Alumnae Association of Texas Woman's University. Several of her prints were exhibited in the 1990 exhibition The Texas Printmakers, 1940–1965. Her work is represented in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Joslyn Museum, Omaha, Nebraska; the Dallas Museum of Art; the San Antonio Museum Association; Southern Methodist University, Dallas; Texas Woman's University, Denton; and numerous private collections.

Coreen Mary Spellman

The Red Barn 

ca. 1930s

Watercolor

Sources
______________________________________________________

Coreen Mary Spellman, Texas State Historical Association, Kendall Curlee, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fsp29, retrieved June 7, 2015.

Peter Hastings Falk, ed., Who Was Who in American Art (Madison, Connecticut: Sound View, 1985). 

Graphic Works of the American Thirties (New York: Da Capo Press, 1977).

 Paul Rogers Harris, The Texas Printmakers, 1940–1965(Dallas: Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University, 1990). Vertical Files, Special Collections, Texas Woman's University.

Phil Kovnick and Marian Yoshicki Kovnick, An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, University of Texas Press, 1998, p. 287-288.

Dallas Museum of Art, Coreen Mary Spellman, https://www.dma.org/collection/artwork/coreen-mary-spellman, retrieved June 7, 2015.

Tina Modotti: Photographer who led a Controversial Life

Edward Weston
Tina Modotti
ca 1925
Gelatin Silver Print

Nicknamed Assuntina, and later Tina, Tina Modotti was born in Udine, Friuli, Italy, the daughter of an Italian machinist who immigrated to the United States in 1906. Despite her rudimentary formal education, Modotti focused on intellectual matters. She grew up among the working poor and politically motivated. Modotti toiled in a textile factory before joining her father in 1913 in San Francisco, where she worked as a seamstress and dressmaker. Attracted to the lively performing arts scene in the Italian emigre community in the San Francisco Bay Area, Modotti tried acting. Her striking appearance and artistic modes of expression led to brief careers in the theater,  opera, and even silent films during the late 1910s and early 1920s. She worked as an artist's model as well.

Modotti married American painter and poet Roubaix "Robo" del L'Abrie Richey in 1918 and the couple moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the burgeoning motion picture industry. Modotti met photographer Edward Weston and his assistant Margrethe Mather and, by 1921, she was his favorite model and his lover by the end of that year. Robo left Los Angeles for Mexico where he died of smallpox while on vacation two days before she arrived.

Edward Weston
Tina Modotti
ca 1925
Photograph
Gelatin Silver Print

When Weston moved to Mexico City two years later in 1923, Modotti became first his assistant, apprentice and eventually his partner in a joint photographic enterprise. The close-up vantage points and lack of context in her early work attest to the influence of Weston and his emphasis on “the thing itself,” but, as Modotti gained experience, her images took on a personal character. The couple embraced the capitol's bohemian scene and used their connections to begin a portrait business.

When Weston returned to California  in 1926, Modotti stayed behind. In 1927 she joined the Communist Party, and her political affiliations and activities changed the direction of her work. She published her images, including portrait studies, in the magazines Mexican Folkways, Formas, and the more radical El Machete. 

Tina Modotti
A proud little agrarista or better son of one 
ca 1927
Gelatin Silver Print

Modotti became the photographer for the Mexican mural movement and documented the works of such artists as Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera. In addition, she experimented with architectural interiors, flowers, and urban landscapes, especially with her poetic portraits of peasants and workers. 

Modotti's one-woman show at the National Library held in December 1929 was advertised as "The First Revolutionary Photographic Exhibition in Mexico." The apex of her career as a photographer would quickly plummet within a year.

Tina Modotti
Market Scene
ca 1927
Gelatin Silver Print

Political and economic issues in Mexico, Central and South America intensified with repression of political dissidents. Modotti's comrade and companion Julio Antonio Mella was assassinated by what were assumed to be agents of the Cuban government in January 1929 and shortly thereafter, an attempt was made on the president. Modotti-target of both the Mexican and Italian police-was questioned about both crimes during a a concerted anti-Communist, anti-immigrant press campaign that depicted her as the "fierce and bloody Tina Modotti," perpetrator of the crimes. 

As a result of the anti-Communist campaign by the Mexican government, Modotti was expelled from the country in 1930 and placed under guard on a ship bound for Rotterdam. The Italian government repeatedly attempted extradition but she managed to evade it by her connections with International Red Aid Activists. Modotti's limited visa allowed for her final destination to be Italy. She stopped in Germany and Switzerland on her way there and was convinced by the deteriorating situation in Germany to move to Moscow in 1931. 

Tina Modotti
Woman of Tehuantepec
ca 1929
Gelatin Silver Print

The Italian government repeatedly attempted extradition but she managed to evade it by her connections with International Red Aid Activists. During the next several years, Modotti worked for various missions on behalf of the International Workers' organizations and the Comintern in Europe. When the Spanish Civil War erupted in 1936, she left Moscow for Spain where she stayed until 1939. Following the collapse of the Republican movement in Spain, Modotti returned to Mexico under a pseudonym and avoided contact with her former comrades. She died of heart failure in Mexico City under what some believe are suspicious circumstances. Her brief career in photography lasted only seven years, but Modotti produced a body of work that included evocative images.  

Tina Modotti
Hands of the Puppeteer
ca 1929
Gelatin Silver Print

Tina Modotti
Misery
ca 1928
Gelatin Silver Print

Tina Modotti
Pinatas
ca 1926
Gelatin Silver Print

_______________________________________________________________
Sources
1. The Web Museum, Tina Modotti, Biography, http://www.modotti.com/?page_id=5, retrieved May 26, 2015.
2. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Women Photojournalists, Tina Modotti, http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/womphotoj/modottiessay.html, retrieved May 26, 2015.
3. Encyclopedia Britannica, Tina Modotti, Italian Photographer, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1160291/Tina-Modotti, retrieved May 26, 2015.
4. George Eastman House, Still Photograph Archive, http://www.geh.org/ar/strip87/htmlsrc3/modotti_sld00001.html, retrieved May 26, 2015.

Isabelle Clark Percy: Artist and co-founder of the California College of Arts and Crafts

Isabelle Clark Percy West
(Center)
At her namesake Isabel West Gallery
  Campus of the California College of Arts and Crafts
ca. 1958-59 

Isabelle Clark Percy was a painter, lithographer, etcher and a liberated woman of her times. Born in Alameda, California on November 6, 1882, she was the daughter of prominent architect George W. Percy, designer of the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, the Hobart Building in San Francisco, and the Christian Brothers Winery in Sonoma. Isabelle studied art at the Mark Hopkins Institute from 1901 to 1905 under Arthur Mathews, with Brangwyn in London, and with Dow and Snell in New York. 

Along with Perham Nahl and Frederick Meyer, Percy founded the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland in about 1907, and for many years she taught there as a Professor of Design. Over the course of her career, Isabelle designed book plates and worked in oil, pastel, watercolor, and color lithography and in 1915, won a bronze medal for her lithography at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Isabelle continued to teach at the college until her retirement in 1941 at which time a gallery, which is still in use on the campus, was named in her honor.

In 1916, Isabelle married George Parsons West, a San Francisco historian and journalist, and settled into a home that she built across the bay in Sausalito where she maintained a studio and continued to paint. The couple divorced in 1934. Following residency in Brooklyn and New York City, until 1920, she returned to the California School of Arts and Crafts from 1921-1942. Isabelle was a member of the San Francisco Art Association and the California Society of Etchers. Her work was exhibited in Paris, Germany, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago in addition to the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco. 

Percy produced a large body of work of both California Themes and of subjects viewed during trips to Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado. She created landscapes, seascapes, and trees in Marin and Monterey counties, studies of adobes, Bay Area scenes and landmarks, views of the missions, and Mother Lode Country themes. She worked until her death in nearby Greenbrae on August 15, 1976. 

Isabel Clark Percy 
Maartjie and Neltjie in the Yard
ca. 1913
Oil on canvas board
16 x 12 3/4 inches

Isabelle Clark Percy
European Street Scene
ca. 1913?
Pastel

Isabel Clark Percy
Cervantes Inn, Toledo, Spain
ca. 1914
13 5/8 x 10 7/8 inches
Color lithograph

Isabelle Clark Percy
Carmel California
ca. 1913?
Pencil and pastel on paper
12 x 9 inches

Isabelle Clark Percy
House Beautiful Cover
ca. 1928
Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper
20 3/8 x 15 3/ 4 inches

Member: San Francisco Sketch Club; San Francisco Art Ass'n; California Society of Etchers. Exhibited: Guild of Arts & Crafts, 1904; Starr King Fraternity, 1905; Del Monte Art Gallery (Monterey), 1908, 1909; Paris Salon, 1911 (honorable mention); Sorosis Club, 1913; California Society of Etchers, 1913; Panama Pacific International Exposition, 1915 (bronze medal); California Artists, Golden Gate Park Museum, 1915; San Francisco Art Ass'n, 1916-25; Oakland Art Gallery, 1932; California College of Arts and Crafts, 1973 (solo). Works held: California Historical Society; Oakland Museum; California College of Arts and Crafts.

_______________________________________________________
Sources
Sylvia Moore, ed., Yesterday and Tomorrow, California Women Artists, Midmarch Arts Press, New York, 1989, p. 69.
Edan Milton Hughes, Specializing in the Art of Early California, http://www.edanhughes.com/biography.cfm?ArtistID=720, retrieved May 19, 2015.
The Annex Galleries, 19th, 20th, and 21st Century Fine Prints, Isabel Percy West Biography, http://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/1854/West/Isabel, retrieved May 19, 2015.
Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki Kovinick, An Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West, University of Texas Press, 1998.
Isabelle Percy West, askART, http://www.askart.com/artist_bio/Isabelle_Percy_West/6009/Isabelle_Percy_West.aspx#, retrieved May 19, 2015.

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

_______________________________________________

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. 

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