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ABSTRACT Title of Document: “LIVE IN THE COUNTRY WITH FAITH”: JANE AND RALPH WHITEHEAD, THE SIMPLE LIFE MOVEMENT, AND ARTS AND CRAFTS IN THE UNITED STATES, ENGLAND AND ON THE CONTINENT, 1870-1930 Heidi Nasstrom, Doctor of Philosophy, 2008 Directed By: Associate Professor Mary Corbin Sies, Department of American Studies American artist Jane Byrd McCall Whitehead (1858-1955) and her English husband Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead (1854-1929) are best known for co-founding the Byrdcliffe Art and Crafts school and colony in Woodstock, New York, which was active from 1903 into the present. Long before Byrdcliffe, however, the Whiteheads formulated plans for an “art convent” founded on principles of the simple life movement. A rejection of repressive social mores and materialistic behavior and a critique of social inequality in the modern world, the Whiteheads’ simple life was enacted in rural places where nature served as a model for spirituality and aesthetics in art and the built environment, and where handwork in the form of art and craft and working the land were balanced with intellectual activity, leisure time and socializing in order to improve physical and psychological well being. This dissertation uses the wealth of primary source material on the Whiteheads—their personal papers, photographs documenting their lives, arts and crafts by them and their circle, built environs and landscapes—to trace the evolution of simple living as it was holistically expressed in the lifestyle and environs they constructed in their early years abroad; their first attempt at simple living as a married couple at Arcady in Montecito, California; and finally, their mature expression at Byrdcliffe in Woodstock, New York. Incorporating an interdisciplinary methodology involving a material culture approach that looks at the man-altered world as evidence for social and cultural history, this is the first scholarly effort to explore what simple living meant and looked like to these particular individuals, and the first project to look at the interconnectedness of simple living on a bi-coastal United States and trans-Atlantic scale between 1870-1930. It also seeks to restore an understanding of Jane’s contributions to the simple life environs and art schools she formulated collaboratively with her husband, which were previously attributed solely to Ralph. “LIVE IN THE COUNTRY WITH FAITH”: JANE AND RALPH WHITEHEAD, THE SIMPLE LIFE MOVEMENT, AND ARTS AND CRAFTS IN THE UNITED STATES, ENGLAND AND ON THE CONTINENT, 1870-1930. By Heidi Nasstrom. Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2008 Advisory Committee: Professor Mary Corbin Sies, Chair Professor Renee Ater Professor Isabelle Gournay Professor Claire Moses Professor Nancy Struna © Copyright by Heidi Nasstrom 2008 Disclaimer The dissertation that follows has had referenced material removed in respect for the owner’s copyright. A complete version of this document, which includes said referenced material, resides in the University of Maryland, College Park’s library collection. ii Foreword It is only fair to start this paper with a confession that it addresses a highly personal topic. Born in 1967, I moved to the Woodstock, New York area where the Whiteheads’ Byrdcliffe is located with my parents who became craftspeople and went “Back to Nature”—as the cultural moment is remembered—from New York City in 1971. Growing up in the area, I was initiated early on to the beauty of the natural world that attracted my parents and the Whiteheads before them to the place. To this day, the smell of the earth and the plants and the look of the mountains there have a powerful physical effect on me. At the time, people in the area were in the habit of simple living—a conscientious choice to make do with less possessions and material wealth in order to live in the country, spend more time with their family, among like-minded people. In my mind’s eye, I remember it being a place where materialistic behavior and showing one’s wealth was considered vulgar, where people lived close to the natural world and reveled in its beauty, a place where architecture, art, and culture were inspired by local nature and highly valued. It was all a bit Arcadian; intellectualism was frowned upon and folk culture and lifeways were appreciated. Residents tended to be proud of and sometimes even protective and elitist about their special way of life. To this day, I consider the Woodstock area nestled in the Catskill Mountains to be one of the most special places on earth, an Eden to which I long to return, but one that no longer seems tangible. I think it was a utopia as only a child without responsibility or awareness of the problems in the world can imagine it. The lifestyle I remember is one that evolved from the Whiteheads’ impetus at the turn-of-the-century. iii As an adult and a historian of nineteenth and twentieth century visual culture, I’ve been trying to figure out why the social world and the cultural moment of my childhood felt so special. I have wondered what my family was doing there and what their (and my) life there meant, hence, my choice of this dissertation topic. I came to the topic over the course of many years. First as an undergraduate intern at the Albany Institute of History and Art, curator Tammis Groft sent me off to Woodstock to collect information about artists in the area for an upcoming exhibition. In retrospect, she was a very thoughtful mentor who directed me toward a project she knew would be meaningful to a slightly clueless but eager and interested student. At the Woodstock Archives, Sam Klein gave me access to his wonderful archives. He let me copy everything I needed and told me to make an extra copy for my personal files. He gently and knowingly suggested I should at some point in the future use the material to write about Woodstock. I still have the photocopies he allowed me to make and never forgot his words. Later, I worked as an intern under Catherine Hoover Voorsanger in the Department of American Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Catherine was a very special person in my life. She collected Byrdcliffe objects for the Met and I think she took a special interest in me because I was from the area. We shared a love of things from Woodstock, the Arts and Crafts movement, and decorative arts and design from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Eventually finding myself in a Ph.D. program, I came to my topic during a course on Victorian Women with Gay Gullickson at the University of Maryland, College Park. I chose to write a paper on Jane Whitehead with the hope that she might be a good dissertation topic. My initial research trip to Winterthur’s Byrdcliffe Collection revealed a world of primary source material that had iv never been looked at with particular interest in Jane. That was the beginning of what you see here. Since that time, countless people have guided, aided, helped and inspired me. As many individuals as I can remember are mentioned in the acknowledgements below. v Dedication To Mark Willcox, Jr. vi Acknowledgements So many people have helped make this project possible. Thank you Mom and Dad for living the simple life in the Woodstock, New York area, introducing me to Byrdcliffe and Arts and Crafts. Doug, your support and determination to see me finish made this possible. Hanna and Clio, you are my muses. Grandmother Lu, thank you for getting your red pen out of retirement to line editing this very long paper! Sam Klein, former archivist at the Woodstock Artists Association, planted the seed. Jane Whitehead’s descendants, Jill and Mark Willcox, Jr., have always been so welcoming, kind, encouraging, and supportive. My dissertation advisor Mary Corbin Sies’s careful reading and painstaking critique of many term papers, doctoral comprehensive exams and this dissertation helped me find my argument. Thanks to my dissertation committee-- Renee Ater, Isabelle Gournay, Claire Moses and Nancy Struna—for your involvement in this project. Robert Edwards, put Byrdcliffe on the map. He ardently supported this project. No longer with us in body but in spirit, Catherine Hoover Voorsanger was a wonderful friend and generous mentor. Rich McKinstry, Laura Parrish, Jeanne Solensky, Neville Thompson and Cate Cooney at Winterthur Library and its Joseph Downs Collection are so knowledgeable about navigating their amazing Byrdcliffe holdings; their friendship made this visiting Fellow always look forward to time spent at Winterthur. Thanks to Pat Elliott, Gretchen Buggeln and Gary Kulik for my Winterthur fellowship. Thank you Jane Milosch, Amelia Goerlitz, Cynthia Mills, Virginia Mecklenburg, Will Morrison, Liza Kirwin, Bill Truettner, Stephen Van Dyk for granting me a predoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. I am especially indebted to Jane Milosch, my fellowship advisor, for collecting an artwork by Jane Whitehead for the nation’s art museum. Nancy Green of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, thank you for the privilege of publishing my work along with you and the other notable Arts and Crafts and Byrdcliffe scholars involved in the Byrdcliffe: An American Arts and Crafts Colony project. You have been so good to me. Thanks to my other colleagues from that project for their generosity: Cheryl Robertson, Tom Wolf and Ellen Denker. Ashley Brown Callahan, William U. Eiland, Dennis Harper, Tricia Miller, Rebecca Yates at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, gave Jane Whitehead and me our first exhibition together. Cynthia Williams, director of the Corcoran College of Art and Design’s Masters Program in History of Decorative Arts, thank you for “A Room of One’s Own.” Lisa Koenigsberg granted me two greatly appreciated opportunities to speak on my work in her Initiatives in Art and Culture conferences.

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