Western North Carolina Artists and Illlustrators to 1950

THE HERITAGE OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA - A COLLABORATIVE DATABASE Asheville Art Museum \| Asheville Historic Resources Commission \| Asheville-Buncombe Library \| UNC Asheville \| YMI Cultural Center
Western North Carolina
ARTISTS & ILLUSTRATORS to 1950
KEY: A=Asheville Artist B=Boone Artist BMC = Black Mountain College Artist BR= Blowing Rock Artist CH= Cherokee Artists (See list) H= Hendersonville Artist S= Sapphire Artist Sa=Saluda T= Tryon Artist VA=Visiting Artist W = Woman Artist	These artists lived, worked, or visited western North Carolina and their association with this region resulted in a body of work depicting the mountains, the people and the way of life in the western part of the state. The list includes artists whose work falls largely before 1945. This list makes no attempt to be comprehensive and additional names are invited. We are appreciative of the contributions and interest of Michael McCue to this list. His work on local artists and craftsmen has been used to augment this list and its information. Expanded discussion of local artists and craftsmen may be found in his publications: McCue, Michael. Tryon Artists 1892-1942, Columbus, N.C. : Condar, 2001 ------------------------. Paris and Tryon: George C. Aid (1872-1938) and his artistic circles in France and North Carolina, Columbus, N.C.: Condar, 2003 ------------------------. Homer Ellertson (1892-1935), Tryon, N.C.: Tryon Fine Arts Center, 2000.
Additional resources: Falk, Peter H., ed. Who Was Who in American Art, 1564-1975: 400 years of artists in America. Madison, Conn.: Sound View Press, 1999. Gowing, Lawrence. A Biographical Dictionary of Artists. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1983. Benezit, Emmanuel. Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs de tous les temps et de tous les pays, par un groupe d'écrivains spécialistes français et étrangers . Paris, 1948-55. Benezit, Emannuel. Dictionary of Artists. Paris: Grund, 2006. LINKS Artist Information UNC CHAPEL HILL An index to the ephemera collection on North Carolina artists in the North Carolina Collection at UNC Chapel Hill

ASSOC.	ARTIST	NOTES
	Fred Achert (1847-1928)
A	Clifford Adams (??)	Murals in the Asheville City Hall
VA	Thomas Addison Richards (1820-1900)	Artist active in western North Carolina late 1800's - early 1900's [?] Generally worked in oil on canvas. His "View of the French Broad River, North Carolina," is found in the Shelburne Museum, VT. Other work is found in the Smithsonian inventories.
T	*George C. Aid	See: George Aid: Paris and Tryon, (2003) and in Tryon Artists, 1892-1942 by Michael J. McCue,(2001).
BMC	Josef Albers (1888-1976)	Black Mountain College artist who taught art and was head of art department 1933-1949.
W BMC	Anni Albers (1899-1994)	Wife of Josef Albers and Black Mountain College artist who taught weaving and textile design at the college 1933-1949.
BMC	Leo Anino (1911-1989)	Black Mountain College artist who taught sculpture. Active at BMC from 1946 summer school and 1950 summer school.
VA	Henry Howard Bagg (1852-1928)	Painted an oil of the French Broad, but is best known for paintings scenes of western life in Colorado and Nebraska
T	Ernest Harrison Barnes	In George Aid: Paris and Tryon, (2003) and in Tryon Artists, 1892-1942 by Michael J. McCue,(2001).
T	*Roy Elliott Bates
W	Bertha Fitzgerald Beale (1877- ?)	Arden, NC, painter and author who studied in Paris, New York City and Philadelphia.
S	*Corydon Bell (1894-1963)	Book illustrator who arrived WNC to permanently reside in 1944 and who lived in Sapphire, N.C.. [Notes from Mike McCue]
T	*Edward Bennett
T	*Clifford Berryman (1869-1949)	The famous Washington D.C. illustrator who created the "Curb Reporter" drawing for the Tryon Daily Bulletin, still in use today! [Note from Mike McCue]
T VA	*Joseph Birren	A Chicago artist who spent summers and other times in western North Carolina. He was a friend of Rudolph Ingerle and the circle of Chicago artists who came to western North Carolina to work.
BMC W	Ilya Bolotowsky (1907-1981)	Black Mountain College artist who taught art from 1946-1948.
BR W	Branson, Edith (1891-1976)	The greater part of Branson's career was spent in New York City, but she maintained a home in Blowing Rock and lived for a time in Chapel Hill. Her North Carolina work came late in her life, but is remarkable in its volume and in her consistent contributions to the Modernist movement. While relatively unknown, her work has recently been discovered by Patricia Thompson, Librarian at UNC’s Joseph Curtis Sloane Art Library, Chapel Hill. An article about Branson by Pat Thompson is soon to be completed. Search "Thompson" at http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/win2007/index.php
T W	*Dorothy Brintnall
	Ignatius (Nace) Brock (active 1897-1950)	Lived in Asheville 1897 to his death in 1950, painter, photographer and poet
T	*John Sylvan Brown
	Harrison Cady (1877-1970)	Had cabin at Lonesome Gap near Spruce Pine. Painted landscapes of area in oil. (Falk)
A	Carter, Poindexter Page (active 1873-1920) Robert E. Lee	A portrait painter from Richmond, Virginia and active there ca. 1873-1900. "He moved to Asheville sometime in the early 20th century, lived in several locations but evidently built a house on Arlington (which is off Charlotte Street, just north of 240). He evidently died around 1920. He did have a daughter who lived in the house another year or so. Woford College has a portrait and evidently there are portraits by Carter at the Smithsonian and the SC State House." [Notes from F. Thomson, Asheville Art Mus.]
T	*Gabrielle DeV. Clements	Gabrielle DeV. Clements worked as a printmaker and knew William Meyerowitz and Ellen Day Hale. She exhibited at the Milch Galleries, 108 W. 57th, New York City on October 29, 1920.
H	Wilford Seymour Conrow (1880 -1957)	Had a summer home in Hendersonville.
A	*Frank W. Cook	Primarily Asheville.
T W	*Josephine Sibley Couper
W	Ida Jolly Crawley (1867 -1946)	Painter and owner of Crawley Museum of Art and Archaeology. Lived in Asheville.
BMC	Jose de Creeft (1884 -1982)	Black Mountain College artist who taught sculpture in the 1944 summer school.
CH W	Amanda Crowe (1928 - )	Cherokee artist who studied at the Chicago Art Institute and received a John Quincy Adams fellowship to study with Jose de Creeft at the Instituto de Allende in Mexico in 1952. Influenced by and studied with Constantine Brancusi.
T W	*Gertrude Spurr Cutts
A	Cutting, George T. Figure Study	A machinist from NYC who came to Asheville where he painted both portrait and landscape. He was an avid hiker and member of the Carolina Mountain Club (from 1970-). His paintings were auctioned at his death and proceeds given to the CMC. He died November 29, 1974.
VA	Charles W. Dahlgreen (1864 -1955)	Friend of John Spelman II and Rudolphe Ingerle. Painter and printmaker of nature who came to western North Carolina infrequently.
BR	Elliott Daingerfield (1859 -1932)	Had a summer home in Blowing Rock
VA	Robert Scott Duncanson (1821 -1872)	African American artist who came to Asheville in 1850 and painted portraits and view of Asheville from Beaucatcher Mountain.
T	*William J. Edmondson
T W	*Louisa Richardson Edsall
T	*Homer Ellertson	See: McCue, Mike.Homer Ellertson (1892-1935), Tryon, N.C.: Tryon Fine Arts Center, 2000.
A	Douglas Ellington (1886 -1964)	Architect and watercolorist who lived and worked in Asheville.
T W	*Emma Payne Erskine
T	*Harold Perry Erskine
A W	Florence C. Estabrook,	Artist who came from Massachusetts to Asheville circa 1890. She apparently continued to live in or near Newton, Mass. as her work was exhibited there and included many western North Carolina titles. She appears in Falk,
	Harry Fenn (1845 -1911)	Illustrator who completed the illustrations for Henry Colton's Picturesque America.
	Joseph Fiore (1925- )	Black Mountain College artist who taught art from 1949 to 1956.
A VA W	Zelda Fitzgerald (1900-1948)	Wife of author F. Scott Fitzgerald who came to Asheville for mental health treatment and died in the tragic Highland Hospital fire . (See N792A, P792A)
	E.T.H. Foster (?? )
B	Henry Eugene Fritz (1875-1956),	Artist whose summer home was in Boone, N.C.
	William C.A. Frerichs (1829-1905)	Painting trips to western North Carolina c. 1855-1863.
T W	*Amanda Fuldner
T	*Howard Giles
T	*J. Duncan Gleason
T W	*Anne Bosworth Greene (1878-1961)	English-born landscape artist who lived and worked for a brief time in Tryon and was a resident of Boston, MA. Greene was a friend of Clare Veronica Hope Leighton and of Diana Nash who also briefly lived in Tryon.
BMC	Balcomb Greene (1904-1990)	Black Mountain College Artist who taught painting in 1946.
BMC	Peter Grippe (1912- )	Black Mountain College artist who taught art sculpture in summer of 1948.
	Frank Herring
T	Nora Hall Higley	Higley was born in 1870 and was a native of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She married Charles W. Higley, an insurance tycoon from Chicago. Their marriage produced a son, Philo Higley , who became a playwright in New York and who also spent a brief time in Tryon where his mother finally settled. Philo , is known for his scripts written for productions in the Helen Hayes Theatre radio dramas and such movies as Remember the Day starring Claudette Colbert. Her favorite medium was watercolor and in this medium she often depicted the landscapes of western North Carolina. One such work is a Tryon landscape called “High Holding” designed for the Misses Holt & Webster, from Chicago, by landscape architect Annette Hoyt Flanders. Her son Philo died in Tryon without descendants.
T	*Alfred Colby Hockings	See end of Brown chapter for life dates & information in McCue, Michael. Tryon Artists 1892-1942, Columbus, N.C. : Condar, 2001
A ?	Carl Hoerman (1885 - 1955)	Carl Hoerman was born in Bavaria in 1885 and died in Douglas, Michigan in 1955. He presumably worked in the circle of Rudolph Ingerle, Holger W. Jensen, and Joseph Birren and other Chicago Art Institute artists who visited western North Carolina. [See: Falk}
A	Emil Holzhauer (1887-1986),	Taught art at the Asheville School, 1940-42
VA	Rudolph Ingerle (1879-1950)	Born in Vienna, Austria, he spent his summers in Bryson City in the 1930's. A friend of Minnesota artist John Spelman II who accompanied him to North Carolina on hunting and fishing trips. Trained at Schmidt's Art Academy and at the Chicago Art Institute. With T.C. Steele and others in the 1920's he formed the Indiana School of painting and later the Ozark School. He was a regular visitor to western North Carolina during the later years of his life. Often referred to as the "Painter of the Smokies," he worked with others to create the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
T	Wilson Irvine (1869-1936)	American Impressionist painter who worked briefly in the Tryon area. Irvine studied at the Art Institute in Chicago and was a founding member of the Palette and Chisel Club and the Cliff Dwellers, artist groups in Chicago. For a time he was also associated with the Old Lyme Connecticut artist colony, headed by Florence Griswold. Generally he painted landscape works, and was noted to have pioneered in the use of the air brush.
BMC	Warren Paul Jennerjahn (1922- )	Black Mountain College artist who taught art from 1941-1959.
VA W	Coral Jensen (??)	Possibly the wife of Holger W. Jensen (1880-1939 ?)
VA	Holger W. Jensen (1880 -1939?)	Jensen, a graduate (?) of the Chicago Art Institute was in the circle of Chicago artists who made western North Carolina a summer home and who recorded the landscape and people of the area. He was born in Denmark in 1880 and died in Illinois [?] in 1939. His wife is possibly Coral Jensen. [See: Falk]
BMC	Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)	Artist who taught painting in the 1948 Black Mountain College summer school.
T VA	Large, Mary (1870-1924)	An elusive artist who was associated for a time with the Tryon artist colony and who worked as a weaver and folk-artist. Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana and associated with Hull House in Chicago, Large was recognized as a weaver and folk-artist. Strongly influenced by the Hungarian textiles of her period,she may have had first-hand contact with important Hungarian weavers. She was a friend of the Wilhelm Kruse (photographer) family. Large authored a book, "The Twelth Juror," Boston, 1908 and also a variety of articles on textiles and weaving. She was considered by many to be a leading authority on folk-art textiles and may have found common interests and support from Margaret Warner Morley, a long-time Tryon resident and author who spent some time in the Tyrol in 1908 and who was interested in local craft-work. Large apparently also had roots in the Southern Appalachians, in the southeastern corner of Kentucky, but lived out her life in New Hampshire, near the Canterbury Shaker colony.
T W	*Margaret Moffett Law (1871-c.1958)	Margaret Moffett Law a resident of upstate South Carolina was an artist and teacher of art. She was a graduate of Converse College in Spartanburg in 1895 and also studied at the Art Students League and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Listed among her teachers are such well-known artists as William Merritt Chase, Charles Hawthorne, Robert Henri, Andre L'Hote and others. She briefly studied in Paris but returned home to South Carolina to live and work.
BMC	Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000)	African American artist who taught art at Black Mountain College in the summer of 1948.
A	Cuthbert Lee (1891- ?)	Artist and author, born in Boston, who belonged to Biltmore Forest Country Club and had fancy contacts & clients. Exhibited in Asheville Art Museum in 1952. Exhibited at the Mint Museum, Atlanta, in 1946. Probably active in western North Carolina by 1950. [Falk] Authored a reference book about American portraits published in Asheville in the 1960s. [Contemporary American portrait painters, illustrating and describing the work of fifty living painters, New York: W.E. Rudge, 1929]. Includes some self-referential material and a list of some clients including Carolinians such as Thomas Wolfe and and early portrait of Dr. Samuel Westray Battle, of Asheville [location?].
T	Clare Leighton (ca.1901-1989) Corn Shucking in the Mountains	Born in England, Clare Veronica Hope Leighton was educated at the Slade School of Art at the University of London. She immigrated to America in 1939 and eventually settled in Durham, North Carolina where she taught art at Duke University. In 1945 she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Colby (Colby-Sawyer) College in Maine [previous home of UNCA's current Chancellor]. While in North Carolina, Leighton was a close friend of playwright Paul Green and other creative artists. She is known to have briefly lived or vacationed in Tryon and to have associated with two English artists living there -- Diana Nash and Anne Bosworth Greene. Her carefully crafted wood engravings were used for illustration of rural English countryside life and for some 65 books, including those of her own authorship. Books authored and illustrated by Leighton include The Farmers Year (1933), Four Hedges (1935), Country Matters (1937) and Southern Harvest (1942). Her work is broadly collected and may be found in the galleries of Randolph-Macon College, Wesleyan University, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Library of Congress.
BMC	Richard Lippold (1917-2000)	Black Mountain College artist who taught sculpture in the summer of 1948.
A W	Rebecca Low (??)	Asheville artist through the mid-1930's. She helped her mother run a tea house on South Liberty, where I-240 runs today.
BMC	John H. McCandless (??)	Black Mountain College artist who taught printmaking from 1949-1950.
T W	Saidie May
T	*Lawrence Mazzanovich
BMC	Robert Motherwell (??)	Black Mountain College artist who taught art in the 1945 summer school and in the 1951 summer school.
VA	F. Richardson Murray	Known to have produced two paintings of Blowing Rock.
W	Faith Cornish Murray (1897-1983)	Jasper Hohn' teacher. [Falk] Some of her work is in GCMA and elsewhere in South Carolina. The Cornish mountain place is at Saluda. Examples of her work are available locally.
T W	Anne Nash* 1880-1974	Tryon artist. Ann Nash is the sister of Diana Nash, and not to be confused with Anne Taylor Nash, a well-documented eastern North Carolina artist. Extant works by Anne Nash of Tryon have not been fully identified.
T W	*Diana L. Nash	English-born artist who lived and worked for a brief time in Tryon. Nash was a friend of Clare Veronica Hope Leighton and of Anne Bosworth Greene.
BMC	Kenneth Noland (1924- )	Student of Ilya Bolotowsky and Joseph Albers
A ?	James William Pattison (1844-1915)	Died in Asheville and may have lived here [?]. Taught in Jacksonville, FL through 1894.
T	*Ruth C. Pratt	May well be Rosalind Clark Pratt who lived in Connecticut, but who worked in the Tryon area. "I now believe Tryon artist "Ruth" C. Pratt may well be Rosalind Clark Pratt, from Connecticut." [Note from Mike McCue who indicates the information may be corrected in the second edition of Tryon Artists 1892-1942.
BMC	James Prestini (1908-1993)	Black Mountain College artist who taught sculpture in the 1944 summer school.
T	Putnam, A.N.	Artist is not found in Falk or other common sources. One known work is Tryon, North Carolina, 1901. Painting was sold by Skinner in Boston.
T	*Fred W. Reich
T	*Louis Rowell
	Chauncey Ryder (1868-1949)	Illustrator and artist who visited and painted in the Smoky Mountains around 1920.
T W	*Stella Cairn Sassoon
T	*George B. Shepherd
	William Ludwell Sheppard (1833-1912)	Illustrator for 'Christian Reid's ' The Land of the Sky published in 1875. Along with Harry Fenn, Sheppard did illustrations for Picturesque America and may have traveled with Fenn to western North Carolina for that project or he may have traveled alone.
VA	John Adams Spelman II (1880-1941)	Spelman studied at the Minneapolis Museum of Art and at the Chicago Art Institute. He enjoyed North Carolina and visited regularly to hunt and fish with his friend Rudolphe Ingerle. His home was in Grand Marais, Minnesota on the shore of Lake Superior. Landscape painting was his strength. His work reflects the influence of Ingerle.
BMC	John Spelman III (1912-1969)	Minnesota artist, and son of John Adams Spelman II, he visited Black Mountain College in 1936 [?] and worked at the Farm School at Swannanoa [Warren Wilson College] and Pine Mountain Settlement School, KY by 1937. Noted for linoleum-block prints and rich pencil drawings, he illustrated the book, The Kentucky for Thomas D. Clark in 1942. and published At Home in the Hills: A Cross Section of Harlan County, Kentucky, 1939, a collection of linoleum block prints that captures rural life in Appalachia. Like his father, John Spelman II, landscape and rural scenes were his strength.
BMC	Theodoros Stamos (1922-1997)	Black Mountain College artist who taught art in 1950 summer school.
T	William Steene	Tryon Artist Colony. According to a local paper, Steene came to Tryon for the first time in in 1926. According to the same local paper, Steene painted a portrait of William Sydney Porter 1862-1910 [0.Henry], while in residence in Tryon. The portrait [now lost ?] was destined for the Asheville "O.Henry Memorial Library [?]," [current location unknown].
A	William Lester Stevens (1888-1969)	Artist who summered in the area in the 1940's and early 1950's.
	Will Henry Stevens (1881-1949)	Beginning around 1920 he taught summer art classes in the region.
A W	Lucille Stonier (1886-1966)	Lived and worked in Asheville from around 1930 until her death in 1966.
T W	*Nancy Bomar Stringer
T	*Augustus Vincent Tack
VA	Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937	African American artist who spent summer of 1889 in Highlands.
	Frank Hamilton Taylor (1846-1927)	A Philadelphia artist who came to western North Carolina about 1881. Some of his WNC work is in Health Resorts of the South found at Pack library, Asheville, NC.
	Eugene Thomason (1895-1972)	Moved to Lake James area in 1939.
VA	Glen Tracy (1883-1956)	Primarily active in Ohio, Tracy painted scenes of Western North Carolina, specifically Buncombe County, as well.
T VA	Ruel Crompton Tuttle	A New England artist who worked in the area in and around Tryon, NC. Tuttle's work may be found in the Tryon Country Club in a watercolor of the links. Signed and dated, 1922, the artist added the holographic inscription on the work "Landscape of Tryon, N.C. Class of 1889 [Trinity college, Hartford, Conn.] which I did in an early morning there last year, (1921), on the golf links." See Falk for additional biographical details.
BMC W	Jean Varda (1893-1971)	Black Mountain College artist who taught painting in the 1944 summer school.
A	William Aiken Walker (1838-1921)	Summered in Asheville and western North Carolina beginning around 1880.
T W	*Amelia Watson	Watercolorist, painter and illustrator. Friend of Tryon author Margaret Warner Morley. Watson's work may be found in the iconic non-fiction book of Morley, In the Carolina Mountains.
T W	*Elsa Weber
VA	Warren Wheelock (1880-1960)	Lived in a cabin near Linville. Painted genre sketches of mountaineers and exhibited nationally. [Falk]
	Paul A.W. Whitener (1911-1959)
T	*Ralph Whiteside	African American artist active in the Tryon Artist Colony
BMC	Emerson Woelffer (1914-2003)	Black Mountain College artist who taught painting in the 1949 summer school.
T W	*Lois Wilcox	Lois Wilcox grew up in Tryon, North Carolina and was influenced by artists associated with the active artist colony in the small western North Carolina town. She had multiple talents and worked as a painter, lithographer, cartoonist, craftsperson, teacher, and writer. Her formal study was with Philip Hale at the Boston Museum School and with Charles Hawthorne as a private student. Later in her life she studied with Italian artists Galemberti and Venturini-Papari. Her first solo exhibit was at the Detroit Institute of the Arts in 1913 and in 1920 she was included in an exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She was painted by Willard Leroy Metcalf at the age of 15 in a less than flattering portrait called by Metcalf, "Bloticelli". She was a student of Metcalf's and also Frank DuMonde, at the Old Lyme Art School at the time.
VA	Frederick Ballard Williams (1871-1956)	Artist who visited the region on many occasions in the 1930s.
A	Clarence Augustus Worrall (1858-1920)	Artist who moved to Asheville around 1900 and whose work appeared locally. Worrall also wrote a column on art for the Asheville Citizen.
BMC	Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967)	Black Mountain College artist who taught sculpture in the 1945 summer school. Born in Russia and moved to Paris in 1909. Zadkine spent most of his life in Paris except for the period of 1940-1945.