Powerful Paintings
Continuing its tradition of celebrating women artists,vose Galleries presents an upcoming show of works from notable 19th- and 20th-century painters
Mary Bradish Titcomb (1858-1927) was born in New Hampshire and traveled south to Boston to study at the Massachusetts Normal Art School which was training young women to be art teachers in the commonwealth’s public schools. Boston had introduced the arts into its schools in the 1870s. After completing her studies,titcomb took a position in nearby Brockton, Massachusetts, as director of drawing. At the age of 44 she decided to dedicate her efforts to becoming a professional artist, resigned her position and enrolled in the Boston Museum School, where she studied under Edmund Tarbell, Frank Benson and Philip Hale from 1902 to 1909. Her painting, Morning at Boxwood was painted just after she completed her studies. It depicts Boxwood Manor in Lyme, Connecticut, which had a summer art school.the veranda was a favorite subject of the students. Later, she became a member of “The Group,” a collective of women artists which exhibited at the Worcester Art Museum and the Detroit Institute of Art. Earlier, she had joined what is now the National Association of Women Artists exhibiting with them from 1914 until her death.
Titcomb came of age in a time of mixed messages for women artists.
Earlier in the 19th century women were taught art as a pleasant diversion. By the end of the century women were pursuing art as a profession.
Vose Galleries in Boston will present the exhibition Bringing to Light:
American Women Artists (1880-1960) November 2 through January 4, 2020.The gallery is continuing its tradition of supporting women artists. Starting in 1913, Robert Churchillvose “included at least one solo exhibition by a woman artist” in the gallery’s annual schedule. In 1919 he put on an extraordinary exhibition “of primarily Boston women artists. Featuring works by Lilian Wescott Hale (1880-1963),
Mary Macomber (1861-1916), Lilla Cabot
Perry (1848-1933), Jane Peterson (1876-1965), Elizabeth Wentworth Roberts (1871-1927), Polly Thayer Starr (1904-2006), Mary Bradish Titcomb (1858-1927), and many more, Bringing to Light: American Women Artists continues to elevate the legacy of these notable women painters and to garner the acclaim they so richly deserve.”
The gallery explains,“women artists also created their own support systems and many thrived in these collaborative relationships.
Several notable associations of women painters were founded in this era, including the ‘The Group’ based in Boston, ‘The Philadelphia Ten’ and the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.these women intentionally exhibited together to gain prominence and therefore greatly influenced each other’s work.”
Nancy Maybin Ferguson (18721967) was a member of “The Philadelphia Ten” whose members had all studied in the city’s art schools. Ferguson attended the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts (PAFA) where she studied under Charles Hawthorne and William
Merritt Chase. She later turned from their academic realism to the modernism of Arthur Carles and his fauvist-inspired work. She summered in Provincetown, Massachusetts, most of her adult life and her paintings of the community show the influences of modernism in its early years in America.
Her painting The Centre of Town, Provincetown, could have been painted yesterday.the town hall with its copper spire was built in 1885 and still commands its site on Commercial Street.the steeple of the Church of the Pilgrims is gone but the building remains.the jumble of closely packed buildings and the bustle of pedestrians along the street continue today.
Martha Walter (1875–1976) was born in Philadelphia and studied under William Merritt Chase at PAFA. She won a traveling fellowship to Europe. They gallery notes,“she settled first in Paris and attended classes at the Académie Chaumiere and later the Académie Julian.though these were some of the best schools in France, she felt restricted by their classical approach, and therefore set up her own studio in the Rue de Bagneaux, where soon many other young American women would join her.walter focused on painting en plein air scenes from everyday life which she depicted with a new bold palette of saturated colors. Her affinity for working out-ofdoors in sun-drenched surroundings eventually brought her to the shores of St. Malo,trouville, and Biarritz, resulting in the colorful, impressionist beach scenes that became a familiar theme throughout her career.” Returning to the United States at the outbreak of World War I, she set up a studio in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where she continued to paint in plein air in an impressionistic manner. Her painting At the Beach (possibly Bass Rocks, Gloucester) exemplifies her interest in impressionism and the fauves with its saturated colors and rapid brush strokes.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a digital catalog which will be viewable online.