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Adele Watson

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Adele Watson
Born(1873-04-30)April 30, 1873
Toledo, Ohio
DiedMarch 23, 1947(1947-03-23) (aged 73)
Pasadena, California
NationalityAmerican
Known forPainting, Lithography
Notable workUntitled (Mountain Island Monk);[1] Untitled (Figure Floating on Lake);[2] Lithographs[3]
StyleLandscape, Symbolist
MovementModernism
Bryce Canyon c. 1930

Fanny Adele Watson (April 30, 1873 – March 23, 1947) was an American painter and lithographer. She lived and worked for much of her life in Pasadena, California.[4] Her work is best known for its spectral female figures and anthropomorphic landscapes.[4][5][6]

Life and Career

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Watson was born on April 30, 1873 in Toledo, Ohio.[7] Her family moved to Pasadena in 1880, after the death of her father. As a young adult, Watson studied at the Art Students League of New York before returning to California in 1917. She also traveled to Paris and became a pupil of Raphael Collin.[6][8]

Throughout her life, Watson was interested in the spiritual dimension of nature and the beauty of the natural world,[4] a subject that also greatly interested the poet and artist Kahlil Gibran, with whom she became friends.[6][9] Gibran drew a portrait of her in graphite in 1926.[6][10]

Watson's first public exhibition was in 1913.[11] Her first New York solo exhibition was held in 1916 at the Folsom Galleries[12] and was reviewed as having "joy, freedom, vitality and abounding sense of rhythm."[13] She exhibited with and was a member of the American Artists Professional League, the Pen and Brush Club,[14] and the Society of Independent Artists; she also exhibited work at the National Academy of Design, among other places.[15][16]

She died in Pasadena on March 23, 1947.[17]

Work and Legacy

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Art and Influences

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Taking inspiration from some of Arthur B. Davies's quasi-symbolist paintings (e.g., A Measure of Dreams), Watson's early work is frequently characterized by otherworldly nude female figures set in natural landscapes.[4][9] Beginning around the 1930s, her later paintings and lithographs began to blend landscape and the human form together, so that anthropomorphic figures seem to emerge out of dreamlike terrain.[18][9] This shift in Watson's work occurred predominantly in response to her experience of the landscapes of Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park.[4][9][18] She made several similar coastal scenes as well,[18][19][20] some of which depict the coast of Maine.[21]

Critical Reception

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Contemporaneous reviews of Watson's art were often positive. Reviewing an exhibition of Watson's work in 1918, an article in American Art News describes "unworldly beings" in her paintings that imbue them with a "spiritual impulse;" the article goes on to praise Watson's "dramatic, epic and pageant sense for conveying her thoughts through her work."[5] A 1924 article in The Art News describes a San Diego exhibition of "sixteen canvases of mystical subjects," which it characterizes as "very low tone and beautiful in color."[16]

Arthur Millier, writing for the Los Angeles Times in 1933 about Watson's exhibit of paintings and painted screens, suggests that "Miss Watson sees landscape in terms of the soul of man."[22] Millier notes that "this is her first Los Angeles showing of her works which have gained favor in the East."[22]

Posthumous Exhibitions and Collections

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In 1953, the Pasadena Art Institute held a retrospective of Watson's work;[23][24][25] and again, in 1963, the Pasadena Art Institute held a memorial exhibition of her work.[26][27] Some of Watson's lithographs were included in a 2021 show at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art titled Remember the Ladies: Women Painters in Ogunquit, 1900-1950.[21] Watson's work was also included in the 2022–2023 exhibit, At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism, at the Whitney Museum of American Art,[6][28] which holds two of her paintings in its permanent collection.[29] Her work is also held in the collections of the Orange County Museum of Art[15] and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[30]

Note

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There was another Adele Watson, who was a contemporary actress: Adele Watson (1890-1933) from Minnesota starred in over 20 films in the 1920s–1930s.[31]

References

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  1. ^ "Adele Watson, Untitled (Mountain Island Monk)". Whitney Museum of American Art.
  2. ^ "Adele Watson, Untitled (Figure Floating on Lake)". Whitney Museum of American Art. Retrieved 2024-12-25.
  3. ^ "[Search Results for "Adele Watson"]". Philadelphia Museum of Art Online Collection. Retrieved 2024-12-25.
  4. ^ a b c d e Haskell, Barbara (2022-10-19). "Early Adopters ["Adele Watson"]". The Magazine Antiques. Retrieved 2024-12-24.
  5. ^ a b "Paintings by Adele Watson". American Art News. 16 (19): 3. 16 February 1918. ISSN 1944-0227. JSTOR 25589232.
  6. ^ a b c d e Gural, Natasha (16 August 2022). "Whitney Museum Re-Informs Our Modernist Gaze, Celebrating Artists Who Have Been Under-Represented In Art History Alongside Leading Masters". Forbes. Archived from the original on 11 June 2023. Retrieved 10 June 2023.
  7. ^ "Watson, Adele". Benezit Dictionary of Artists. 2011. doi:10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00194897. ISBN 978-0-19-977378-7.
  8. ^ Hughes, Edan. "Adele Watson". CalART.com. Archived from the original on 1 July 2023. Retrieved 30 June 2023.
  9. ^ a b c d Fort, Ilene Susan (1995). "The Adventuresome, the Eccentrics, and the Dreamers: Women Modernists of Southern California". In Trenton, Patricia (ed.). Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945 (1st ed.). University of California Press. pp. 75–106. ISBN 9780520202030.
  10. ^ "GIBRAN, KAHLIL | Portrait of Adele Watson". Sotheby's. Retrieved 2024-12-24.
  11. ^ "Arts and Artists". American Art News. 13 (19): 7. 13 February 1915. ISSN 1944-0227. JSTOR 25588527. Like her pictures shown at the Museum at her first public exhibition two years ago...
  12. ^ "Miss Watson's Pastorals". American Art News. 15 (9): 3. 18 November 1916. ISSN 1944-0227. JSTOR 25588974. Adele Watson, who has a poetic tendency and some grace of composition, is displaying, at the Folsom Galleries...
  13. ^ "Pasadena Painter Given Plaudits: Adele Watson's Landscapes Impress New York; Brooklyn 'Eagle' Comments on Rhythmic Beauty Expressed on Canvas Shown at Her First Metropolitan Exhibition--Varying Ideals Contrasted". Los Angeles Times. 7 January 1917. pp. III 4.
  14. ^ "Pen and Brush Club, Show". American Art News. 18 (16): 3. 7 February 1920. ISSN 1944-0227. JSTOR 25589580.
  15. ^ a b "Adele (Fanny) Watson". AskArt. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  16. ^ a b "San Diego". The Art News. 22 (25): 11. 29 March 1924. ISSN 0004-3273 – via JSTOR.
  17. ^ "Adele Watson, Painter, Dies". Los Angeles Times. 24 March 1947. p. 5. ISSN 0458-3035. Miss Adele Watson, noted painter and daughter of early Southern California family, died yesterday at Huntington Memorial Hospital, Pasadena, after a brief illness.
  18. ^ a b c "Women in Zion - Artists". Zion National Park. U.S. National Park Service. Archived from the original on 7 April 2023. Retrieved 30 June 2023.
  19. ^ "Adele Watson, Untitled (Mountain Island Monk)". Whitney Museum of American Art.
  20. ^ "Point Lobos, California". philamuseum.org. Retrieved 2024-12-24.
  21. ^ a b Stone, Kathleen (2024-12-23). "Visual Arts Review: "Remember the Ladies" -- A Balmy Era for Women Artists in New England - The Arts Fuse". The Arts Fuse. Retrieved 2024-12-24.
  22. ^ a b Miller, Arthur (9 April 1933). "Reviews of Local Music and Art: Woman Painter's Vision Lends Wings to Landscape Adele Watson Peoples Earth With Poetic Beings; Pasadena Academy Sponsors Large Show; Other Exhibits". Los Angeles Times. pp. A6.
  23. ^ "Fanny Adele Watson Biography". Annex Galleries Fine Prints. Archived from the original on 15 May 2023. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  24. ^ "In the Galleries: Sun Dominates Mood of Crown's Canvases". Los Angeles Times. 1 February 1953. pp. D8. The [Pasadena Art Institute] also devotes considerable space to a retrospective exhibition of the paintings, drawings and prints of Adele Watson...
  25. ^ "Paintings and Drawings by Adele Watson". Norton Simon Museum. 1953. Archived from the original on 12 June 2023. Retrieved 11 June 2023.
  26. ^ "Complete Guide to Southland Entertainment and Culture - Art - Continuing Exhibits". Los Angeles Times. 24 February 1963. pp. B11.
  27. ^ "Adele Watson Memorial". Norton Simon Museum. 1963. Archived from the original on 19 May 2022. Retrieved 11 June 2023.
  28. ^ "At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism". Whitney Museum of American Art. 2022. Archived from the original on 15 March 2023. Retrieved 10 June 2023.
  29. ^ "Adele Watson". Whitney Museum of American Art. Archived from the original on 1 April 2023. Retrieved 10 June 2023.
  30. ^ "Search: Adele Watson". Philadelphia Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 12 June 2023. Retrieved 11 June 2023.
  31. ^ "Adele Watson (1890-1933)". IMDb. Archived from the original on 1 July 2023. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
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