Usually, I avoid drawing personal parallels in writing here, but I have a soft spot for printmaker Margaret Jordan Patterson (1867-1950). Like my father, she was a scholarship student at Pratt Ins
titute in New York City, a college known for its excellent school of art. Patterson's one year of study, 1895-1896, with Arthur Wesley Dow, stood her in good stead when her wanderlust peridoically drew her away from the sedentary life. Dow, who adapted the aesthetics of Japan to his art teaching, must have been a congenial instructor for the worldly young woman.
titute in New York City, a college known for its excellent school of art. Patterson's one year of study, 1895-1896, with Arthur Wesley Dow, stood her in good stead when her wanderlust peridoically drew her away from the sedentary life. Dow, who adapted the aesthetics of Japan to his art teaching, must have been a congenial instructor for the worldly young woman.
Margaret Jordan (from her mother Sarah Jordan) Patterson (from her father Alfred Patterson) came from a family of sea captains. Her parents were working their way around the world when Margaret was born in Soerabaija, Java. Voyages with her father and grandfather gave the little girl the taste for travel.
As an adult, Patteron's long tenure as assistant director of drawing for Boston Public Schools barely cramped her style. The summers were hers, for travel and study with Ethel Mars in Paris, the sponsor of Patterson's first exhibition at Galerie Levesque in 1913. It may have been the connection with Mars that brought Patterson to Cape Cod in the 1910s - or not. Patterson was perfectly capable of checking out new places on her own. From the river marshes and ocean dunes of eastern Massachusetts to the rocky coast of Monterey, Patterson documented her delight in the colors of land and sea. Curiously, she achieved greater subtlties in her printmaking than in her painting, coaxing a great variety of tones from the rigid medium of the woodblock.
Images:
Images:
1.Summer Clouds, c. 1918, Leepa-Ratner Museum of Art, St. Petersburg, Florida.
2. Coastal Cedars -Winter, c. 1915-1920, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
3. Fall Trees, 1913, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
4. Fall Trees - Belgium, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
5. The Swan-Belgium, Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
Addendum: You may also be interested in Jane Berry Judson and the Shadows of Fontainebleau, posted here 11 October 2008.
Addendum: You may also be interested in Jane Berry Judson and the Shadows of Fontainebleau, posted here 11 October 2008.
8 comments:
Those "Summer Clouds" have a serious case of wanderlust (one of my very favorite words by the way). A family of sea captains no less!
Woodblocks?! My gosh, what artistry! And I know firsthand the precision and happy accidents (and unhappy accidents) that printmaking includes. thank you for these examples.
Well, these certainly have stirred up my Wanderlust! The 1913 Fall Trees is very nice. The red roof off to the side just the right touch.
Lorenzo, the website of Traditional Fine Arts, www.tfaoi.com, has two articles about Margaret Jordan Patterson's work, more than I was able to find in books. Rebecca Solnit's history of walking is titled "Wanderlust." That's what made me read it.
Jeanne, Patteron's prints and paintings are similar in style and subject but I always prefer the woodcuts. Her treescapes (of Belgium) done in the Symbolist style might look heavy-handed or imitative if they were done in paint.
Rouchswalwe, the spring weather will do that too. "Summer Clouds" makes me homesick for the New England coast. I don't remember whether I was smart enough to know how lucky I was to live there as a child - but I know now.
I know your post is an older one, but I stumbled upon your sight while searching Margaret Patterson. I have a beautiful old block print that Margaret Patterson did in 1922 labeled "Capri". If you'd like to see it. My mother found it in a trash can in Santa Fe, NM many, many years ago. What a find!!
SooZeQue. What a treasure you have. I hope you can post the image on your website. One of my art history professors found an etching by the British artist J.M.W. Turner at a garage sale on a farm in New York State. As Fats Waller put it: One never knows, do one?"
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