A Legacy Rediscovered: Northwest Women Artists 1920-1970

January 24, 2024 at 1:25 p.m.
(left to right) Anne Kutka McCosh, (1902-94), At the Millinery Shop, c.1938, Oil, Private Collection; Z. Vanessa Helder, (1904-68), Portrait of Blanche Luzader Morgan, c.1939, Oil, Private Collection; Mabel Lisle Ducasse, (1895-1976), Untitled [women having tea], c.1922, Oil, Collection of Lindsey and Carolyn Echelbarger
(left to right) Anne Kutka McCosh, (1902-94), At the Millinery Shop, c.1938, Oil, Private Collection; Z. Vanessa Helder, (1904-68), Portrait of Blanche Luzader Morgan, c.1939, Oil, Private Collection; Mabel Lisle Ducasse, (1895-1976), Untitled [women having tea], c.1922, Oil, Collection of Lindsey and Carolyn Echelbarger

Cascadia Art Museum's new exhibition, A Legacy Rediscovered: Northwest Women Artists, begins in the year 1920, the year women were granted the right to vote. 

The exhibition explores women artists who defied the societal expectations of their era and pursued careers in the arts -- despite the many pressures and roadblocks that they encountered. Although their work is rarely seen today, many women artists were an integral part of the region’s nascent cultural development. The exhibition opened earlier this month and will run through January 5, 2025. 

Featured artists include:

Louise Crow (right) with Agapito Pino, courtesy Cascadia Art Museum

 

Louise Crow (1891-1968). One of the most interesting and elusive members of Seattle's early art community, Crow was born and raised in Seattle. She was a member of a noted wealthy pioneer family. Her maternal uncle, Robert Moran, was twice mayor of Seattle and head of the Moran Brothers Shipbuilding Company. Crow began her studies in Seattle, then went on to study in New York and Paris. She became internationally recognized for her portraits, landscapes and Native American studies. Crow was also a noted art teacher. Suffering from untreated mental illness and the loss of her family's wealth during the Great Depression, Louise Crow became poverty stricken and most of her art was lost or destroyed. In 1994, Cascadia Art Museum's curator David Martin and his partner Dominic Zambito located Crow's unmarked grave in Colma, California and purchased a headstone to honor her importance to Northwest art.

 

Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008). An early pioneer in computer-generated art and video, Doris Totten Chase was born in Seattle and graduated from Roosevelt High School. She studied architecture at the University of Washington but ended her studies after meeting her future husband. Her art career began after the birth of her first child. Suffering from post-partum depression, her doctor suggested she pursue an expressive hobby and Chase discovered that she possessed a talent for painting. She began studying oil painting, including studying with Mark Tobey. Her reputation grew as a painter, and her work was included in local, national, and international venues. Then Chase became interested in cement, wood and metal sculpture. After one of her sculptures was used in a dance production, she pursued video as an artistic medium. Her early videos, which combined dance, film clips and multicolored geometric movement, were considered groundbreaking. Her notable public sculptures include "Changing Form" (1971), which is installed at Kerry Park on Seattle's Queen Anne Hill, and "Moon Gates" at the Seattle Center. Chase's complete works in video and film were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Margaret Tomkins (1916 - 2002). Margaret Tomkins was one of the leading painters of the Pacific Northwest, best known for her Surrealist works of the 1940s that earned her numerous national and regional awards. In the 1950s and '60s, her work evolved into an abstract and expressionist style that she maintained in various phases for the remainder of her artistic life. Tomkins was born in L.A. and studied art at the University of Southern California. Her first important national exhibition was at the 1939 New York Worlds Fair. Tomkins moved to Seattle in 1939 and briefly served as Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Washington. She had her first solo exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum and that same year became involved in the Federal Arts Projects. She and her husband, noted artist James H. FitzGerald, also worked in ceramics and even furniture design. In 1959, a devastating studio fire destroyed the majority of the couple's work, although they continued to produce art after the fire. Tomkins' work was included in numerous national exhibitions. 

Lucia Wiley (1906-1998). Lucia Wiley was born in Tillamook, Oregon. She attended the University of Oregon, where she studied with Lance Wood Hart who introduced her to fresco and mural painting. Several of her mural studies are presented at the exhibition. Wiley began to paint frescos at public building locations in Minnesota before returning to Tillamook where she completed more frescos. In 1955, Miss Wiley left Oregon for New York City where she entered the Episcopal order of the Community of Holy Spirit. She became principal of the lower school at St. Hilda's and St. Hugh's school in New York. Sister Lucia also did illustrations in the Book of Common Prayer. She received the prestigious "Medal of Honor" awarded by the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution for outstanding community service in 1985 and was named one of the "Eight Best Mural Painters" in the nation. In 2023, Cascadia Art Museum was gifted numerous important works by Sister Lucia Wiley from the Community of Holy Spirit. 


This exhibition will also introduce the work of Roselyn Buck Pape (1925-2020) and Elsa Thoresen (1906-1994), a leading figure in European Surrealism who settled in Seattle after WWII. Other artists in the exhibition include Anne Kutka McCosh (1902-1994), Mabel Lisle Ducasse (1895-1976), Zama Vanessa Helder (1904-1968). 

While the exhibition does not include some of the region's earliest women artists, the Cascadia Art Museum acknowledges their contributions. These early pioneers in Northwest women's art include Harriet Foster Beecher, who opened the first professional art studio in Seattle in 1881; Ella Shepard Bush, who founded the Seattle Art School in 1894; Lillian Anin Pettingill, who was the first instructor in Seattle to use live models in her classes. 

It is important to note that the region's earliest arts groups were also organized primarily by women. They include the first arts organization in Seattle -- the Society of Seattle Artists which was established in 1904, and the Fine Arts Society -- founded in 1906 -- which became the Seattle Art Museum in 1933. By 1928, the Northwest Printmakers Society had formed, and ten of the twelve charter members were women. Women Painters of Washington was formed in 1930 and the Northwest watercolor Society was established by three women artists in 1940. Both organizations continue successfully to this day.

David F. Martin, curator, Cascadia Art Museum

 

The museum's curator, David F. Martin, pioneered the study of women artists of the Northwest. He began this work in the 1980s and has produced several seminal exhibitions and publications that brought national and international attention to these deserving artists. In the early 1990s, Martin was appointed the Northwest representative for the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington. He and his partner, Dominic Zambito, have donated works by three of the Northwest's pioneering women artists to institutions such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC and the Centre Pompidou and Musée d'Orsay, both in Paris. Martin's work has earned him an honorary membership in the Women Painters of Washington, the only male member of the influential group. 


Cascadia Art Museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11am to 5pm and is located at 190 Sunset Ave. S. in Edmonds. For more information, call 425-336-4809 or visit www.cascadiaartmuseum.org.
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