By July of 1937 three of Seward’s daughters had married and left home. In 1936 the first of C.A. and Mabel Seward’s eleven grandchildren was born (fig. 24). She was the only grandchild C.A. saw before he died and he carefully inscribed his color print Waterlilies “to Phyllis Louise from her Grand Daddy.” During this year he completed his last known lithograph, Pueblo Memories (fig. 25). The year 1938 proved to be Seward’s most challenging. In January his father, Roscoe, who had been living with C.A. and Mabel, died at the age of 76. By the summer, C.A.’s own health was declining, and he asked his close friend and fellow artist Leo Courtney to hold a sale of his extensive art collection in an effort to provide for his wife and youngest daughter, Virginia, who was still residing with her parents. The sale was held at Courtney’s Art Shop in Wichita in October. Throughout 1938, Seward, with the assistance of his four daughters and wife, had been working to maintain his correspondence and activities with his many artist friends who were spread across the country. In May 1938 Peter Hurd wrote to Seward from Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, “Thank you for your letter inviting me to become a member of the Prairie Print Makers. I know of your organization and shall be very happy to join it should I be elected.” And in October, American printmaker John Taylor Arms wrote to express his regret that Seward’s health would not permit him to serve on a committee, noting, “I know only too well when doctors decree no outside activities, there is nothing to be done about it! It is my earnest hope that your health will continue to improve.” On January 31, 1939, Coy Avon Seward died in Wesley Hospital in Wichita, Kansas. The cause was an infection that had affected his weakened heart, damaged from childhood rheumatic fever. The Wichita Eagle headlined their obituary, “C.A. Seward nationally famous artist and beloved Wichita citizen, died in a local hospital yesterday.” In 1940 the Kansas Magazine featured a memorial album 24
collection of Seward prints with a tribute by John F. Helm, Jr. Through the years other exhibitions of his work have been mounted in honor of the position he filled in Wichita and in Kansas, including a 1946 memorial exhibition of his prints at the Wichita Art Museum. In 1991 an exhibition titled “C.A. Seward, Kansas Artist” was shown at the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum. In 2008, the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum included Seward’s work in the exhibition “Seminal Artists in Wichita, 1880-1940.” The 2010 exhibition at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas in Lawrence related to this publication represents that museum’s first monographic treatment of Seward.