National Association of Women Artists: The 135th Anniversary
All rights reserved, 2024. This catalog may not be reproduced in whole or in any part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of Graham Shay 1857 and Lincoln Glenn.
Design by Clanci Jo Conover
Front cover illustration:
Josephine Paddock
Flowers in the Garden
Oil on canvas
25 x 30 inches
Back cover illustration:
Harriet Whitney Frishmuth
Rhapsody, 1925
Bronze, dark brown and green patina
11 3/4 H. x 8 1/8 W. x 5 D. inches
After a successful exhibition in the fall of 2023 presenting a survey of work by artists who participated in the 1913 Armory Show, Lincoln Glenn and Graham Shay are pleased to team up again to present a survey of works by National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) members.
While strides for equality have been made in museums, the press, and art market for American female abstract expressionists, the more traditional American art canon has often lagged in recalibration efforts. We hope this exhibition is a reminder and challenge to our clients, friends, and ourselves that many of the historical women artists in this show did not have the same opportunities to become household names despite their obvious talents. We urge you to look closely as there are diamonds in the rough that can be found on many of the pages within. Many convey an inclination for travel, the freedom of youth, and inclusion of minority and female subjects.
We are grateful to NAWA for facilitating these artists’ aspirations since 1889. We would also like to thank Jeffrey Wechsler who brought the organization’s 135th anniversary to our attention. We look forward to your visit to our 17 East 67th Street gallery to view these 59 works by 51 female artists all created before 1985.
Warmly,
Doug Gold, Eli Sterngass, and Cameron Shay
Lincoln Glenn and Graham Shay 1857 Galleries
The National Association of Women Artists: 1889 – 2024 (and counting)
For women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics.
-- Virginia WoolfJust as Virginia Woolf believed that women authors needed a modest wage and a room of their own to write fiction, women artists have searched for a place to exhibit their work and a group of their peers to provide artistic and intellectual support. In reflecting on her membership in the National Association of Women Artists, the New York artist Minna Citron summed up, "I think that associations and association with other artists are very important." For example, Citron remembered sharing her Union Square studio space in New York City with a fellow artist. When the artist's husband built a beautiful, spacious studio for her at their home in Brooklyn Heights, she moved her materials there. Despite her husband's largesse, Citron's friend was back in the Union Square studio within a few months, lamenting "I felt isolatedisolated from other artists, isolated from reality."
The National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) was founded by five women who felt isolated from a community of their peers and from the opportunity to exhibit their art. Celebrating its 135th year in 2024, NAWA is the oldest women artists' collective in the United States, and provides a community for professional women artists, promoting the work of its over 900 members through annual exhibitions, traveling shows, awards, and educational and outreach programs. Over the years, NAWA's members have included such illustrious American artists as Mary Cassatt, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Blanche Lazzell, Isabel Bishop, Doris Lee, Dorothy Dehner, Louise Nevelson, Faith Ringgold, and Pat Adams.
NAWA was founded on January 31, 1889, by five artists: Grace Fitz-Randolph, Edith Mitchell Prellwitz, Adele Frances Bedell, Anita C. Ashley, and Elizabeth S. Cheever. Naming their group Woman's Art Club of New York, the founders contended that theirs was not a social club; rather, the organization provided opportunities for serious women artists to exhibit their work during a period when women found few occasions to display their art publicly. Members of the Woman's Art Club did not situate themselves politically as suffragists or supporters of equal rights for women. Instead, they attained leadership roles and public influence within the arena of their women's organization. They provided women with an alternative to the maledominated National Academy of Design and Society of American Artists in New 2
York, which continued to bar women from participating in many life drawing and anatomy classes, from gaining governing positions, and from exhibiting their art at annual exhibitions (where only 10% of the art displayed was created by women). Exhibition opportunities had increased for women at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876 and the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago of 1893. At both fairs, women had the choice of exhibiting in the main juried art exhibitions or in segregated women's buildings. However, in the segregated exhibitions, fine art by women was displayed side by side with women's needlework and crafts. While the women's organizing committee praised the "womanly work" in the Chicago Woman's Building, suffragist groups decried the segregation of sexes and the amalgamation of women's art with crafts. Given these problematic women's exhibitions and the male-dominated academies, the Woman's Art Club provided a necessary venue for professional women artists to exhibit with their peers. Attesting to the success of the club during these early years, important women artists contributed to its exhibitions, including Rosa Bonheur, Suzanne Valadon, Cecilia Beaux, and Mary Cassatt.
The first three decades of the 20th century were productive ones for NAWA. By 1917, the Woman's Art Club had changed its name to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, reflecting its enlarged, nationwide membership of 500, and critics routinely praised the "individuality and splendid optimism" of their annual exhibitions. During NAWA's period of expansion, members instigated traveling shows of women's art in urban and rural areas throughout the country. Broadening their scope still further in 1924, NAWA began to organize exhibitions that traveled abroad, the first touring Argentina and Brazil. In 1925, NAWA members took an important step toward independence, purchasing a clubhouse in Manhattan. They now had a permanent gathering place for group and solo shows, weekly teas, art demonstrations and lectures, and an evening sketch class with professional models. Collector and sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, a member artist, played an important role in advancing the cause of contemporary American artists through the Whitney Studio Club, where she sponsored annual exhibitions from 1918 to 1930 and amassed a permanent collection (which later became the Whitney Museum of American Art). During the first decades of the 20th century, women played significant roles in the proliferation of artist colonies in rural areas outside New York City, as for example Woodstock, New York, and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Printmaker Blanche Lazzell spent her summers in Provincetown, where artists formed a colony in 1915. Influenced by Japanese color woodcuts, Lazzell created colorful prints, in which she subjected the landscape to an overall flattened design.
NAWA's membership reached 1,000 artists in 1930. The association sold its clubhouse that year and leased a space on 57th Street, which members called the 3
Argent Galleries. It provided women with the cachet of two exhibition spaces in the heart of New York's gallery district, and the opportunity for increased numbers of exhibitions. Extended opportunities for NAWA members ran parallel with the advantages for women involved in the relief programs of the Works Projects Administration (WPA) from 1934 to 1939. Of the artists involved in these programs supporting painters, graphic artists, and sculptors, 41% were women. Because related Federal Art Project (FAP) public mural commissions were awarded to artists based on anonymous competitions, women's art was presented to the public in record proportion. NAWA members supported by the WPA and FAP included Isabel Bishop, Minna Citron, Riva Helfond, and Doris Lee. Bishop was part of the 14th Street School of urban realism with Kenneth Hayes Miller, Reginald Marsh, and others, with studios located on Union Square in New York City. Bishop's city scenes often featured anecdotal vignettes of a favored subject: the working girl surrounded by the commotion of the teeming city. Bishop and other NAWA artists excelled in graphic art during this period; they included Clare Leighton, Anne Steele Marsh, Doris Lee, and Minna Citron.
"When I was just starting out, it was a marvelous opportunity to exhibit with the NAWA," remembered Cleo Hartwig, who began to exhibit her sculpture with the association in 1943. Works by Hartwig, Malvina Hoffman, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and other sculptors of the 1930s and '40s appealed to the prevailing critics more than works in any other medium in the NAWA exhibitions. "On the whole the National Association of Women Artists has a very strong sculpture group," wrote an Art Digest critic in 1949; "the present exhibition at the Argent Galleries has some four-star pieces." He singled out a work in marble by Cleo Hartwig and "two strong stone reliefs" by Margaret Brassler Kane. Hartwig, Kane, Dorothea Greenbaum, and other NAWA artists mastered the technique of direct carving, allowing the shape, grain, and texture of the stone or wood they carved to be retained in the final sculpted form. In later decades, NAWA sculptors included Mary Callery, Louise Nevelson, Dorothy Dehner, and Dorothy Gillespie.
Already by 1939, when NAWA celebrated its 50th anniversary, certain critics questioned the association's purpose. Although some felt its anniversary show was the "largest and most important exhibition to open lately on New York's 57th Street," others failed to see the necessity for its members to exhibit separately. One Art News critic wrote, "segregation of sexes has not only lost most of its raison d'etre but seems to counteract the original purpose." However, NAWA reasoned that it maintained its "identity as a women's organization" because of its "pride in a record of forty-nine years of women working together … to extend the field of opportunity for women." NAWA members acknowledged their separate status as women even more frankly during the '40s, '50s, and '60s. In 1948, NAWA president Grace Treadwell pointed
out, "The problem of women in creative fields is actually no easier in some respects than it was fifty years ago, in that our women still have homes, husbands, children, and many responsibilities." NAWA members further allied themselves with domestic life and advertising in 1957, when an article appeared in the magazine, Living for Young Homemakers. It began: "The National Association of Women Artists believes that art should be lived with .... [Their work] combines a high degree of professional skill with a warmth and livability most welcome in the American home." Similarly, the art of selected NAWA members enhanced window displays showing the latest in women's fashion at Saks Fifth Avenue and other New York department stores in 1962. By acknowledging their separate status and experience as women, NAWA members broached concerns that some women artists would develop further in the 1970s and '80s. While NAWA had given up the Argent Galleries in 1955, it continued to sponsor solo and group shows of women's art, traveling them to venues throughout the United States.
Over the years, several artists, both members and non-members of NAWA, have accepted the role of Honorary Vice President; this group includes Faith Ringgold, Dorothea Rockburne, Pat Adams, Audrey Flack, Judith Brodsky, and Judy Chicago, among others. With Miriam Schapiro, Judy Chicago established the feminist art program at the California School of the Arts in Los Angeles. Their feminism has shaped their art, which Chicago asserted, must come from their experience as women. Chicago explored "female imagery" in her controversial Dinner Party and in The Birth Project, both collaborative works produced in conjunction with hundreds of women artists and artisans.
Adding to its longtime list of charitable work in a variety of fields, NAWA raised $5,000 in 1985 for the new National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. But the concept of “Women Only” art exhibitions and organizations has come into question in the context of shifting societal trends and philosophies. Some have asked: "Is there still a need for NAWA?" For Lily Harmon, it seemed not. After several years of NAWA membership in the 1940s, Harmon decided to opt out. "In my day, it seemed like a good idea to stop my membership with NAWA. Women artists shouldn't be singled out as if they don't belong with men." Echoing the concerns of Harmon, Helen Harrison posited in her 1988 New York Times review of NAWA's 100th anniversary exhibition, "Perhaps the association's next step will be to herald the full integration of American art by changing its name to the National Society of Artists and admitting men." However, for Pat Adams, NAWA "serves a very useful place for women artists. So many women embrace life fully but find their efforts as artists delayed by familial responsibilities. They need a point of reentry, a place to come together, show their work, and engage in critical dialogue." Similarly, art historian Wanda Corn's comments about the necessity for the National Museum of
Women in the Arts in Washington seem apropos of NAWA:
“Until such time as female culture is fully integrated into our museums and cultural institutions, women's exhibition halls still have a job to do. When other institutions do so little, women's buildings foster respect for women's work – and in the process, give women back their past.”
In 1988, NAWA president Liana Moonie realized the need for a permanent collection for the association. She approached Douglass College, the women's college at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, suggesting that the university museum might house the new collection. She reasoned that Rutgers' distinguished programs in women's history and women's studies would provide educational support for the works by women artists. Subsequently, NAWA members generously donated their collection to the Zimmerli Art Museum of Rutgers, where it continued to grow through donations and occasional purchases. In combination with the works by contemporary NAWA members that comprise the current Hollis Taggart exhibition, they reveal the ongoing achievement of women artists, and celebrate the 135th anniversary year of NAWA, a significant contributor to the history of women’s art in the United States.
This essay is modified from a brochure that accompanied the exhibition marking the establishment of the National Association of Women Artists Collection at Rutgers, which is housed at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. The author of the original essay was Donna Gustafson, who is now the Chief Curator of the Zimmerli Art Museum. When the initial NAWA show occurred at the museum, Jeffrey Wechsler was the Senior Curator; he had been directly involved with the acquisition of the NAWA Collection, and organized several NAWA shows at Rutgers and other venues. After his retirement from the museum, he continued as a member of the Executive Board of NAWA; he edited the original brochure text to relate more directly to the historical exhibition at the Graham Shay 1857 and Lincoln Glenn galleries.
Helen Mears (1872-1916)
Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 1898
Bronze bas-relief, natural color with a rust-colored ground 8 5/8 H. x 7 1/2 W. x 5/8 D. inches
Signed and inscribed upper center: AVGVSTVS SAINT GAVDENS SCUVLPTOR
AETATIS L / HELEN MEARS FECIT / PARIS MDCCCXCVIII
Stamped bottom edge: GORHAM CO FOUNDERS QAJX
Stamped verso: QAJX
Janet Scudder (1869-1940)
Frog Baby Fountain, 1901
Bronze, dark brown patina
12 1/8 H. x 8 W. x 5 3/4 D. inches
Signed at rear vertical edge of self bronze base: JANET SCUDDER
© GORHAM CO.FOUNDERS / QUI / Gorham cipher
Summer in Provincetown, circa 1900
Oil on artist's board
10 1/4 x 13 inches
Pauline Palmer (1867-1938)
Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, circa 1908
Oil on board
7 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches
Signed lower right
Jane Peterson (1876-1965)
Abastenia St. Leger Eberle (1878-1942)
Little Mother, 1907
Bronze, brown patina
12 7/8 H. x 4 1/4 W. x 4 3/8 D. inches
Signed: ASt.L. Eberle. 1911
Stamped: S. KLABER & CO. / FOUNDERS, N.Y.
Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942)
Mrs. John Frederick Lewis and Her Son, John Frederick Lewis, Jr., 1908
Oil on canvas
83 3/4 x 48 3/4 inches
Signed lower left: Cecilia Beaux
Theresa Bernstein (1895-2002)
Self Portrait, circa 1915
Oil on canvas
22 3/4 x 21 1/4 inches
77 x 38 inches
Martha Walter (1875-1976) Lady with a Parasol (Portrait of Alice Schille?), c. 1905 Oil on canvas
Janet Scudder (1869-1940)
Young Diana, 1911
Bronze, dark brown patina
27 1/8 H. x 14 1/2 W. x 7 D. inches
Signed on base: JANET SCUDDER.
Inscribed on base: A. RUDIER. / FONDEUR / PARIS.
Private collection
Flowers in the Garden
Oil on canvas
25 x 30 inches
Signed on the reverse
Alice Schille (1869-1955)
At the Beach, Gloucester
Watercolor and pencil on card
16 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches
Signed lower right
Untitled (Appalachian Scene), circa 1914-15
Oil on canvas
21 x 14 inches
Signed lower right: B.
Blanche Lazzell (1878-1956)
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875-1942)
Still at His Post, circa 1919
Bronze, dark brown patina
14 3/8 H. x 10 1/4 W. x 9 D. inches
Signed on base: Gertrude V Whitney / NY
Numbered on base: 13
Inscribed on base:ROMAN BRONZE / WORKS N–Y–
The Sunbeam, 1921
Bronze, brown patina
11 H. x 6 W. x 5 3/4 D. inches
Signed and numbered no. X
Inscribed R.B.W.
Mounted on original 3 inch marble base
Marion Eldridge (1869-1939)
Washington Square Park, circa 1925-30
Oil on canvas
18 x 22 inches
Signed lower right
Sailboats in Central Park
Oil on gessoed masonite
9 x 12 inches
Emma Fordyce MacRae (1887-1974)
Ruth Anderson (1891-1957)
Municipal Building, Manhattan, circa 1918
Old Adobe Village, New Mexico
Watercolor on paper
5 x 6 inches
Signed lower right
Alice Schille (1869-1955)
Martinique
Oil on artist's board
17 1/2 x 14 inches
Signed lower left
A Martinique Native in French Guiana, circa 1925
Watercolor on paper
24 x 20 inches
Signed lower right; titled on the reverse
Louise Cox (1865-1945)
Woman Holding Flowers, 1893
Oil on canvas
15 x 18 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Harriet Whitney Frishmuth (1880-1980)
Joy of the Waters Fountain, 1920
Bronze with brown patina and verdigris
44 inches high
Inscribed 'HARRIET W. FRISHMUTH Sc./© 1920' and stamped 'GORHAM CO. FOUNDERS/QBKX' along the base
Agnes Richmond (1870-1964)
Woman In Pink, circa 1920
Oil on canvas
42 x 30 inches
Signed on the stretcher
Mary Elizabeth Price (1877-1965)
Byzantine Fountain, Italy, 1921
Oil on canvas
24 3/16 x 30 5/16 inches
Signed "M. Elizabeth Price" lower left, inscribed "M. Elizabeth Price 140 West 57th St.
Byzantine Fountain" on stretcher verso
Low Tide - Brittany, France
Oil on canvasboard
18 x 21 1/2 inches
Signed lower right
Henriette Oberteuffer (1878-1962)
Elephants Inside the Circus Tent
Oil on board
12 x 15 13/16 inches
Signed upper right
Gertrude Fiske (1879-1961)
Schooner at Anchor, Gloucester, Massachusetts
Oil on panel
11 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches
Signed lower left
Alice Judson (1876-1948)
Children in the Lane, Provincetown
Oil on board
14 x 10 inches
Signed lower right
Bearskin Neck, Rockport, Massachusetts
Oil on canvasboard
17 1/2 x 14 inches
Signed lower right
Katherine Farrell (1857-1951)
Martha Walter (1875-1976)
Gloucester
Watercolor on paper
14 1/2 x 18 inches
Signed lower left
Brenda Putnam (1890-1975)
Child with Rabbits, 1924
Bronze, brown and green patina
Central figure: 29 H. x 17 1/2 W. x 18 D. inches
Signed and dated 1924, foundry mark for Kunst Foundry New York, American, 1924
Harriet Whitney Frishmuth (1880-1980)
Rhapsody, 1925
Bronze, dark brown and green patina
11 3/4 H. x 8 1/8 W. x 5 D. inches
Signed on base: HARRIET W. FRISHMUTH / © 1925
Stamped on base: GORHAM CO FOUNDERS QFGT
Malvina Hoffman (1885-1966)
Dance of Parvati, Nyota Inyoka, 1932
Bronze, brown patina with gilded accents
10 1/2 H. x 12 7/8 W. x 3 3/4 D. inches
Signed on base: © MALVINA HOFFMAN 1932
Stamped on base: C. Valsuani / Cire Perdue / PARIS
Mounted on original painted wood base
Overall height: 12 inches
Private collection
Arcturus, Helsingfors, 1935
Oil on canvas
19 x 16 inches
Signed, titled and dated lower right
Eve Drewelowe (1899-1989)
Tully Lumber Mill, Orange, Massachusetts, 1935
Oil on canvas
17 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Dorothy Eaton (1893-1968)
Country Woman, 1936
Oil on canvas
28 1/4 x 41 1/4 inches
Signed lower right: Doris Lee
Doris Lee (1905-1983)
Washington Square Park Fountain, 1938
Oil on canvas 30 x 40 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Dorothy Eisner (1906-1984)
Signed lower left; signed, titled and dated on the reverse
Ida Ten Eyck O'Keeffe (1889-1961) The County Seat, 1941 Oil on canvas 48 1/2 x 48 1/2 inches
Chung's New World, 1944
Oil on canvas
39 x 25 inches
Signed lower right
Dorothy Deyrup (1908-1961)
Kyra Markham (1891-1967)
Looking Out the Window, Vermont, 1947
Oil on board
20 x 16 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Isabel Bishop
Homeword, circa 1951
Oil on board
19 x 14 1/2 inches
Signed lower right
(1902-1988)
Nevelson
ArtNews Illustration, 1954
Graphite on paper
12 x 9 inches
Signed lower right: Louise Nevelson
Louise (1899-1988)
Nevelson, 1975
Oil on board
10 1/4 x 11 3/4 inches
Signed lower left: Walinska '75
Anna Walinska (1906-1997)
Head, 1945
Cast tattistone, mounted on artist's wood base
9 5/8 H. x 9 3/4 W. x 1 D. inches
Private collection
Louise Nevelson (1899-1988)
Dorothy Dehner (1901-1994)
Untitled (Wall Relief), 1985
Bronze, unique cast with golden patina
13 H. x 5 W. x 1 1/2 D. inches
Also included in the exhibition:
Anna Richards Brewster (1870-1952)
Horse Guards Parade from St. James's Park, London
Oil on canvas
6 1/2 x 6 3/4 inches
Anna Richards Brewster (1870-1952)
Palma, Majorca
Oil on canvas laid down on masonite
9 1/4 x 13 1/4 inches
Anna Richards Brewster (1870-1952)
The Acropolis, Athens
Oil on canvas laid down on board
9 x 12 3/4 inches
Ada Rasario Cecere (1893-1981)
Cyclamen
Oil on canvas
23 x 19 3/4 inches
Signed lower right
Cornelia Foley (1909-2010)
Mannequins, after 1940
Oil on canvas
28 x 48 inches
Signed "C. Foley" lower right
Marion Greenwood (1909-1970)
Zapotecan, 1956
Watercolor on paper
12 1/4 x 9 5/8 inches
Signed and dated
Lena Gurr (1897-1992)
Young Couple Lounging, Florida
Oil on board
25 1/2 x 32 inches
Signed lower right
Lily Harmon (1912-1998)
Woman With Rose
Ink and gouache on board
23 x 19 inches
Emily Nichols Hatch (1871-1959)
Washington Square in Winter, circa 1920
Woodblock on paper
Image: 5 1/4 x 6 1/4 in.; sheet: 6 3/4 x 7 1/2 in.
Signed in pencil lower right, titled lower left
Doris Lee (1905-1983)
Thanksgiving, 1942
Lithograph on paper
Image: 8 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches; Sheet: 12 x 17 in.
Signed lower right, titled lower left
From the edition of 250
Agnes Pelton (1881-1961)
Hayground Windmill, Bridgehampton, circa 1920
Oil on canvas
20 x 25 inches
Susan Gertrude Schell (1891-1970)
Covered Bridge
Oil on canvas
35 x 40 inches
Signed lower right
Hanny Van der Velde (1883-1959)
Smoky Mountain Vista
Oil on canvas
20 x 22 inches
Signed lower right
Robert Vonnoh (1858-1933)
Bessie Potter Vonnoh at Her Dressing Table, 1912
Oil on canvas
36 x 30 inches
Ruth Anderson.
Artist Index
Cecilia Beaux.....................................................................
Theresa Bernstein...............................................................
Isabel Bishop......................................................................
Anna Richards Brewster............................................
Ada Rasario Cecere............................................................
Louise Cox.........................................................................
Dorothy Dehner.................................................................
Dorothy Deyrup.................................................................
Eve Drewelowe...................................................................
Dorothy Eaton...................................................................
Abastenia St. Leger Eberle.................................................
Dorothy Eisner...................................................................
Marion Eldridge.................................................................
Katherine Farrell................................................................
Gertrude Fiske...................................................................
Cornelia Foley....................................................................
Harriet Whitney Frishmuth................................................
Marion Greenwood............................................................
Lena Gurr..........................................................................
Lily Harmon......................................................................
Emily Nichols Hatch..........................................................
Malvina Hoffman...............................................................
Alice Judson.......................................................................
Ilah Marian Kibbey.............................................................
Blanche Lazzell...................................................................
Doris Lee............................................................................
Emma
Christina
