Lynne Blackman - Central to Their Lives

CENTRAL TO THEIR LIVES

CENTRAL TO THEIR LIVES

SOUTHERN WOMEN ARTISTSinTHE JOHNSON COLLECTION

Edited by LYNNE BLACKMAN

Foreword by SYLVIA YOUNT

Essays by

MARTHA R. SEVERENS

DEBORAH C. POLLACK

EVIE TERRONO

KAREN TOWERS KLACSMANN

ERIN R. CORRALES-DIAZ

and DANIEL BELASCO

THE JOHNSON COLLECTION in association with

THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRESS

2018 University of South Carolina

Published by the University of South Carolina Press

Columbia, South Carolina 29208

www.sc.edu/uscpress

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/.

ISBN: 978-1-61117-954-5 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-1-61117-955-2 (ebook)

Unless otherwise noted, all images are property of the Johnson Collection, LLC.

Frontispiece: Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer (18731943), Portrait of Madeline McDowell Breckinridge, 1920, oil on canvas, 48 37 inches

Front cover design by BookMatters

This volume accompanies the exhibition of the same title.

Exhibition venues include

Georgia Museum of Art, Athens

June 30September 23, 2018

Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson

October 6, 2018January 20, 2019

Huntington Museum of Art, West Virginia

March 2June 30, 2019

Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, Tennessee

July 28October 13, 2019

Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina

January 17May 3, 2020

Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville, Florida

June 23November 29, 2020

Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia

January 30June 13, 2021

Contents

SYLVIA YOUNT

SUSANNA JOHNSON SHANNON

THE PEDESTAL HAS CRASHED:
ISSUES FACING WOMEN ARTISTS IN THE SOUTH

MARTHA R. SEVERENS

SISTERHOODS OF SPIRIT:
SOUTHERN WOMENS CLUBS AND EXPOSITIONS

DEBORAH C. POLLACK

EVIE TERRONO

OF THE SOUTH, FOR THE SOUTH AND BY THE SOUTH:
THE SOUTHERN STATES ART LEAGUE

KAREN TOWERS KLACSMANN

CONTRARY INSTINCTS:
ART HISTORYS GENDERED COLOR LINE

ERIN R. CORRALES-DIAZ

EYES WIDE OPEN:
MODERNIST WOMEN ARTISTS IN THE SOUTH

DANIEL BELASCO

Anne Mauger Taylor Nash (18841968), Portrait of a Young Girl, oil on canvas, 23 19 inches

Foreword

Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection is the third survey exhibition and publication to be organized by the Johnson Collection, marking another exciting contribution to the overdue investigation of a critical dimension of American art historyartistic production and reception in the American South. Having long been concerned with regional art worlds as well as women artists and artists of color in my own scholarship, I am particularly cheered by the expanding interest of academy- and museum-based scholars in these lesser-known figures of our discipline.

Stronger literary traditions in the region have allowed many Southern women writers of the period covered by this cataloglate 1890s to early 1960sto flourish on a national, even international stage, from Kate Chopin to Zora Neale Hurston to Harper Lee. While visual art had a later start in the South, in the eighteenth century there were face paintersfor example, Henrietta Johnston and Mary Roberts, based in Charleston, South Carolinawho pioneered professional careers, among the first in the nation.

Conservative gender norms and biases embraced throughout nineteenth-century America created challenging obstacles for women intent on pursuing careers in the arts, but many persisted. Education was key, and in the post-Civil War decades, more art schools opened their doors to women. Philadelphias Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and New Yorks Cooper Union and Art Students League were leading institutions that inspired Southern women to leave their homes and head north in pursuit of art studies from the 1880s through the early decades of the twentieth century. Artist-educators Thomas Eakins, William Merritt Chase, Cecilia Beaux, Robert Henri, and others served as influential mentors to a generation of women from the Southpainters, sculptors, and photographers, as well as teachers, patrons, and museum founders. That many of these women congregated in both year-round and summer art colonies in the North and SouthShinnecock, Long Island; Cos Cob, Connecticut; Blowing Rock and Tryon, North Carolina, to name a fewsuggests a more complex picture of social and cultural cross-fertilization than has often been acknowledged. Colleges in the region, such as Converse, Newcomb, Randolph-Macon, and Spelman, also nurtured the growth of artists and independent women in both the so-called fine and applied fields. Progressive clubs and suffrage organizations were as critical to creating networks of support and opportunity for women in the South as they were throughout the United States. In the thoughtful and revealing essays that follow, these and other subjects are given well-deserved attention in the context of works in the Johnson Collection.

How do we define an artists Southern identity, whether she is native-born or transplanted, a permanent resident or a seasonal visitor? Does an iconic figure like Georgia OKeeffewho attended boarding school at Virginias Chatham Hall and spent some of her twenties in Charlottesville, then taught in South Carolina at Columbia Collegebear traces of that experience? What about the internationally acclaimed Massachusetts-born sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington, who married into an established family with Virginia roots and lived the latter half of her life in South Carolina; or the Florida-raised Harlem Renaissance sculptor and teacher Augusta Savage, who struggled to overcome the challenges of her Southern past?

The Johnson Collection is to be commended for casting a wide net in its formation of holdings that reflect a range of socioeconomic, racial, and stylistic differences among women artists associated with the regiontrained and untrained, professional and amateur, working in a variety of media. Moreover, the consequential scholarship that the Johnson Collection is supporting will serve as an important complement and corrective to the greater emphasis that has heretofore been placed on women active in the larger art centers of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati.

Having descended from generations of inspiring Southern women, grown up in the North as well as the South, and worked in art museums from Boston and Philadelphia to Atlanta, Richmond, and New York, I have both personal and professional interest in seeing the art historical record of womens achievementsacross Americarecovered and shared. Only then will we all be able to appreciate more inclusive narratives and enriching cultural experiences in our classrooms, galleries, and museums. It is high time.

SYLVIA YOUNT
LAWRENCE A. FLEISCHMAN CURATOR IN CHARGE OF THE AMERICAN WING
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

Introduction

Art is central to my life. Not being able to make or see art would be a major deprivation.