Liberating Landscape Women Artists Discovering the Land, Tradition, and Themselves in Northern Arizona, 1900-1940

Liberating Landscape Women Artists discovering the land, tradition, and themselves in Northern Arizona, 1900-1940 Introduction The dramatic scale and rich colors of the American Southwest exhilarated visitors who arrived in greater numbers with the establishment of railroad and tourism in the area. For women uneasy with Victorian social constraints, the new landscape was liberating. Their journeys in the new landscape were social as well as geographical; providing an opportunity for independence, self-discovery, and reinvention. The artists in this exhibition were all inspired by the sublime landscapes and the richness of Native American culture. In Arizona women developed the early art scene long before statehood (1912). These early artists faced challenges to establish themselves in their new state. Arizona lacked the institutions, patrons, and broad cultural support that had been developed in New Mexico, where writers based in Santa Fe and Taos wrote evocatively of the Southwest and enthusiastically promoted its rich cultural heritage. In Arizona, geographical distance made it more difficult to establish a sense of community. Despite being scattered throughout the state, a loose network developed. Kate Cory and Lillian Wilhelm Smith both moved to Prescott after spending years traveling the backroads of Northern Arizona. Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton moved to Flagstaff in 1926 from Philadelphia. The painter Jesse Benton Evans was one of the leaders in Phoenix where her Italianate villa, “Casa del Deserto,” was a welcoming oasis of gardens filled with flowers and fountains. Her regular salons became an important cultural hub. The far-flung network of artists, men and women, was unified through two annual exhibitions. The Arizona State Fair began in 1915 where the Women’s Club of Phoenix sponsored the art exhibit, spearheaded by Jesse Benton Evans. In Flagstaff, Mary- Russell Ferrell Colton initiated the annual Arizona Artists and Craftsmen Exhibitions at the Museum of Northern Arizona in 1929. Arizona’s women artists made strong showings at both of these exhibits, with Lillian Wilhelm Smith contributing more work than any other. Harriet Morton Holmes, Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton, Lillian Wilhelm Smith and Kate Cory, all exhibited their work at both of these gatherings of artists. Most popular were landscape subjects, though Hopi and Navajo portraits and genre scenes were also popular. Nampeyo Nampeyo (c. 1859 –1942) of Hano, the Tewa village at Hopi, was a pioneering artist in another way. She gained great fame and respect for her technical and artistic skill as a potter and for her reinterpretation of the distinctive pottery made at the nearby village of Sikyatki between the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. By the 1870s she was already making a steady income from her pottery. Her knowledge of the earlier Sikyatki style came from her opportunity to study ancient ceramics unearthed in ancestral Hopi sites such as Sikyatki. Trader Thomas Keam and archeologist J. Walter Fewkes encouraged her to experiment with older forms and designs. Nampeyo began to use the same fine yellow clay used by her ancestors and created pottery with a radiant warm sheen and intricate painted designs featuring stylized butterflies, birds and other natural forms. Referred to as the Sikyatki Revival style, Nampeyo’s ceramics are not only beautiful, they are technically superlative. She was one of a small number of artists, including Lucy Lewis and Maria and Julian Martinez credited with revitalizing the traditions and quality of Puebloan pottery in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Women in subsequent generations of Nampeyo’s family continued to make pottery and receive recognition for the beauty and quality of their ceramic wares. She had given birth to an artistic dynasty. Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton During the summer of 1910, Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton (1889-1971) first visited Flagstaff and Grand Canyon. She returned two years later on her honeymoon with Dr. Harold Sellers Colton, a marine biologist by training. After numerous summer excursions to Northern Arizona, the couple moved permanently to Flagstaff in 1926. The excerpt from her 1912 letter written from New Mexico [above] vividly captures the scale and natural beauty of the landscape she encountered. Her independent spirit and creative drive would lead her through a life of adventure and artistic success. Sixteen years later, Colton’s love of art, nature, and southwestern cultures would lead her to help establish the Museum of Northern Arizona with her husband and other members of the local intellectual community. She went on to become an important leader in Arizona’s artistic community, arts education in Northern Arizona, and in supporting the work of Native American artists. Colton’s life and artwork echoed the optimism and modernity of the early twentieth century. KATE CORY Kate Thomson Cory (1861-1958) came to northern Arizona from New York in 1905. Cory had studied at the Art Students League and Cooper Union, and then as an independent woman, had established herself as a painter and commercial artist. She came to Arizona at the invitation of her friend and fellow painter Louis Akin. Akin had sought other artists with enthusiastic descriptions of the region’s landscape and indigenous people, to establish an artists’ colony at Hopi. When Cory arrived, she discovered that Akin had changed his plans and moved to Flagstaff. The artist’s colony never materialized but Cory lived at Hopi until 1912. She learned the Hopi language, wrote about Hopi grammar, and documented life in the villages with more than six hundred photographs and paintings. Kate Cory exhibited her painting Arizona Desert at the 1913 Armory Show in New York, famed as the first large-scale introduction of European modernism to America. Cory also exhibited paintings in the 1929, 1934 and 1935 Arizona Artists Arts and Crafts Exhibitions at the Museum of Northern Arizona as well as in the 1916, 1927 and 1929 Arizona State Fairs. She also had two works in the extensive Santa Fe Railroad collection of Western art. Nora Lucy Mowbray Cundell A native of London, Nora Lucy Mowbray Cundell (1889-1948), who once described herself as a “respectable British spinster,” came to visit the Grand Canyon in 1934 with her sister and brother-in-law. Following her first visit to Marble Canyon and the Vermillion Cliffs, she wrote that she had finally found the place that was always meant to be her home. She returned to Marble Canyon the following year. After arriving in New York, she purchased a used Model A Ford that she drove across the country to Arizona. There she spent the winter at Marble Canyon painting the dramatic landscapes and local Navajo people. Her illustrated memoirs were published in Unsentimental Journey in 1940. She spent the World War II years in London, but when peace was re- established, she returned to Marble Canyon to paint. Harriet Morton Holmes Harriet Morton Holmes (1876-1967) moved to Phoenix 1910 from Los Angeles, where she had been living with her husband of seven years. In Phoenix she taught high school and she began creating prints by various techniques including etching, engraving, and block prints. In 1920 she took up oil painting during a summer spent in Taos working with Russian-born painter Leon Gaspard. Holmes exhibited her works in the Arizona State Fair and at MNA’s Arizona Artists and Craftsmen Exhibitions in the 1920s and 1930s. Lillian Wilhelm Smith Lillian Wilhelm Smith (1882-1971), like Kate Cory, had studied at the Art Students League in New York. She first came to Arizona in 1913 with her cousin by marriage, Western novelist Zane Grey. She was along to make illustrations for his book The Rainbow Trail. By 1916, Smith had settled in Arizona and following a brief marriage to Westbrook Robertson she married Jesse (Jess) Smith in 1924. Smith was a cowboy and guide whom she had likely met at the Wetherill-Colville Guest Ranch the year before. Jess had been the basis for several of Zane Grey’s fictitious characters. The couple shared a great love of the outdoors, and his work afforded her excellent opportunities for new subjects in remote sites, often reached on horseback. For the next forty years the pair traveled all over the state, living at times in Tuba City, the Bradshaw Mountains, Oak Creek Canyon, and the Dragoon Mountains. Smith became the first Anglo woman to hike to Havasu Canyon and the first artist to paint the dramatic waterfalls. She also designed a series of china that featured Apache, Navajo, and Hopi motifs. Sold through Goldwater’s Department Stores, the collection was the first regional, mass-produced line of American dinnerware. .

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