Conducting research for my new book Fidelia Bridges: Nature into Art (London: Lund Humphries, 2023; fig. 1) a document emerged among her papers that stopped me in my tracks: a 2-page handwritten poem with illustrations in the margins that bore the final line “Valentine Feb. 14, 1891,” all done in brown ink. Bridge created a two-track body of work. She made fine art paintings primarily of birds and wildflowers that she exhibited in prestigious venues around the United States and in Britain. Simultaneously her imagery was reproduced as chromolithographs for the popular market. Her commercial work was published by Louis Prang as greeting cards and gift books for Christmas, Easter and yes- you guessed it – Valentine’s Day (fig. 2). It was intriguing to think of someone creating a greeting card for her, but who?

I began obsessing over the possibility that I had finally found a juicy tidbit related to some love interest – male or female – to spice up her life story. Samples of handwriting were compared, the content scrutinized for any revealing clues, and the document shared with a friend who was familiar with the artist and her circle.

Who were the likely suspects among her male friends? Her close confidante, artist Oliver Ingraham Lay, came to mind but was immediately eliminated as he had passed away in 1890 (fig. 3). William Trost Richards was a life-long friend, but this did not seem to be his style. Was there another male figure yet to emerge from the archives? I couldn’t rule out women, like the sculptor Ann Whitney, with whom she shared a close camaraderie. Then there was Annie Brown, one of her charges when she was a governess who became a life-long friend. All this personal speculation seemed to be to no avail, the answer had to be concealed in the text,

The lines on the second page (fig. 4) referenced her watercolors of New England birds she depicted over the four seasons of the year:

“Let others watch for blue birds note,

And long to hear the robin’s call,

Once- I too, hungered (!) for the birds,-

But now – I scorn them, one and all!

Fall, winter snow

And march wind blow,

Come, April days

With budding tree;

Bring sun or shower –

Bring bird or flower, –

But bring my mistress back to me!

That day will come. I dream and wait

Dear Mistress, grant

This prayer of mine!-

Leave friends – leave Sea- come back to me

Thy faithful Cute – thy Valentine.

But that seemed to lead nowhere, so I went back to the first page (fig. 5):

“Dear Mistress of my heart and home

My every thought turns still to thee

Sleeping or waking, I but wait

The day that brings thee back to me!

Curled up in my bed so soft and warm

I dream no more

Of rat or mouse

My list’ening ear awaits one sound,-

They footsteps light,

About the house.

I miss thy gentle voice, that called

I miss they soft, caressing hand,-

Ah! Could I know them here, once more,

Glad, I’d obey their last command!”

The illustrations provided some help in my decoding efforts: page one was adorned with the branches of a pussy willow and page two featured cattails.

Any guesses?

Then it hit me, Fidelia had been a cat lover all her adult life and was photographed and even painted with her feline friends. The line that reads “I dream no more of rat or mouse” gave it away. Someone had crafted the message from the point of view of her cat!

So even though I have yet to crack the riddle of who penned these lines, it was meant as a kindly joke and was not evidence of a hot romance after all.

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

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Katherine Manthorne (c) 2022

 Telling the Lives of Visual Artists: A Female Artist in the Pioneer West

Artists don’t make it easy for their biographers. The intensely-private Winslow Homer is one example of the reluctant painter who – when he sensed a journalist was pursuing him – sequestered himself inside his studio and placed a sign on the door that read “Winslow Homer is not at home.” He insisted, like many, that his art should speak for itself, while the details of his daily existence were irrelevant. How then does the passionate biographer gather research and narrate the life of the individual who created a complex body of work at a particular historic moment?  With persistence, material can be gathered and books completed, but then what? Books focusing on the careers of writers – novelists, poets and essayists – are eagerly consumed by the American readers, who can conveniently find them under the heading of “Literary Biography.” Conversely, there is no comparable rubric for the life stories of those who create images. Does this mean that the public doesn’t really care about the visual arts, or is it that their lives just don’t translate into exciting tales? How can writers make their lives more relevant and accessible?

These are the questions I struggled with as I pondered Homer’s contemporary Eliza Pratt Greatorex (1819-1897), the most prominent female artist in post-Civil War New York.  Slowly accumulating the details of her life, I became hooked on her personal and professional story and in December 2020 – at the height of the pandemic – the University of California Press published my monograph entitled Restless Enterprise: The Art and Life of Eliza Pratt Greatorex (fig. 1).  The book follows her successive reinventions as as landscape painter, urban graphic artist and plein-air etcher while tracing her political advocacy for Women’s Rights, architectural preservation and the place of the Irish in America.  A widow with four children and limited finances, she charted her path to success in the male art establishment to become the hero of her own life’s journey. Here journey is the operative word, for her’s was a peripatetic life that is perhaps best told as a travelogue. Bearing in mind that it was taboo in her day for a woman to travel without a male escort, I want to share one of her many adventures as we celebrate her birthday December 25, 1819.

“Mrs. Greatorex, an artist of considerable note in the east … is en route to Colorado on a sketching tour” a Denver newspaper announced in July 1873. She intended “to procure illustrations for a work on this territory” which she published that December as a book Summer Etchings in Colorado, just in time for the Christmas market (fig. 2). Four years earlier the Transcontinental Railroad began conveying travelers across the US in less than a week, a vast improvement over the months of bouncing along in a saddle or the backbreaking stagecoach seats in former times.  Always in search of new material for her art, Greatorex had begun planning a trip to the Rocky Mountains during her 1870-72 sojourn in Bavaria (fig. 3).  She also thought that outdoor life (fig. 4) would be a good experience for her two daughters — Kathleen, age 23, and Eleanor, age 19 – both artists-in-training. So the trio headed west by train from New York to Denver, then south, to arrive at the newly founded Colorado Springs, where they encountered Chavano and other Ute Indians (fig. 5). From there they made the arduous climb up Cheyenne Cañon, celebrating their achievement by making an on-the-spot drawing and inserting the three female figures on the ledge just below the falls (fig. 6).

They explored the Garden of the Gods, where she rendered the fantastic rock formations (fig. 7). And they survived the perils of an ascent up Mount Lincoln and then a descent into Montezuma mine, considered the highest in North America (fig. 8).  “From Pueblo to the coal mines is the wildest bit of country I had yet seen,” she wrote in her book. “We enter the mines. By the twinkling lamps carried in the miners’ hats we see & wonder at the dark processes of mining…. Later we turn away from those living tombs… and the hard lives passed in the Pueblo Coal Mines.” Her pictures convey the Rockies from a woman’s perspective while her Colorado story possesses all the elements we identify as characteristic of western sagas: enterprise, talent, hope, tragedy, and sheer love of adventure. Telling the life of this pioneering female visual artist was itself an adventure.

Happy Birthday, Eliza Greatorex!!

This inspiring book rewrites the history we thought we knew about women artists in 19th-century New York. Rediscovering a life once described in the national press as among the most important women in American history, the author also brings other lesser-known women into the canon. Unlike privileged woman like Mary Cassatt, Greatorex was born in Ireland, the daughter of a Methodist circuit-preacher, who through personal industry and restless entrepreneurship managed as a widow to raise four children, while building a stellar career as the foremost American woman-artist of her age. In researching this book, Manthorne retraced Eliza’s journey from Ireland to New York, to Munich, Oberammergau, Colorado and France.

“A work of exceptional scholarship and dynamic storytelling, Restless Enterprise offers the first, comprehensive biography and critical assessment of the long-overlooked American artist Eliza Pratt Greatorex. Decades of original research have come to exquisite fruition in this captivating account of Irish roots, nineteenth-century art, women’s rights, and westward expansion. Dr. Manthorne has illuminated a new star in American cultural history.”

–Adrienne Baxter Bell, Ph.D., author of George Inness and the Visionary Landscape and George Inness: Writings and Reflections on Art and Philosophy

Pre-order a copy online now, and receive a 30% discount.

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