California Women Artists of the Modern Period

Zama Vanessa Helder’s Tulips is a prime example of the artist’s careful, even precise, manner of depicting in watercolor her chosen subject matter. Whether she was painting in the startlingly austere style of her architectural and landscape works, or in the intensely Modernist style of her portraits and still lifes, Zama Vanessa Helder’s work had a direct, unguarded quality that was both exciting and unsettling. Her work was included in exhibitions in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and at the Museum of Modern Art, where she exhibited in two shows, Americans, 1943 and American Realists and Magic Realists. The latter exhibition included 12 of Helder’s watercolors, along with the work of Hopper, Sheeler, Wyeth, and others.

An artist who crafted her skills without exhibiting her artworks during her husband’s career, Helen Clark Oldfield was a Modernist maverick creating intensely colorful still life paintings like her 1927 oil painting The Hat, and serene landscape paintings like her 1927 Lone Pine Hills. Helen Clark’s teacher was her future husband, Otis Oldfield. Her 1925 India ink drawing Palace of Fine Arts, created one year prior to her marriage to Oldfield, is a unique and careful study of the important Bernard Maybeck sculptural edifice created for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. By the time of her husband’s passing in 1969, Helen had created an impressive body of work speaking to her independent and unique sensibility.

Victorian Essay is a stunning example of Edna Reindel’s unparalleled ability to create Realist and Magic Realist images that transfix the viewer. Edna Reindel created still life compositions with a sense of three-dimensionality and a heightened focus. Her precise style and deft handling of the brush, combined with the use of clear, rich color and concise form, produced works known for their impressive clarity and level of detail. Reindel’s 1932 Victorian Essay is highly detailed, incorporating seemingly unrelated objects to create a story the viewer must discern. The blueprint held open by the hand-shaped paperweight toward the center of the painting draws the viewer to the exquisite vase behind, which itself depicts a fully-realized landscape. The extraordinary level of detail in Reindel’s masterwork is seemingly never-ending.

Grace Libby Vollmer was, and still remains, a very interesting early California artist due to the bold, original painting and drawing techniques she implemented in the 1920s and 1930s. Her landscapes, still lifes, portraits and figurative work ranged in style from Impressionist, to Cubist, to near-Abstraction, while always being both engaging to her audience and well-received by critics. Vollmer’s circa-1929 Taos Scene is a superb example of the artist’s oeuvre. Vollmer and her husband lived for a time in the art colony of Taos, New Mexico, resulting in a particularly productive period for Vollmer, who was captivated by the light and ambience of the region. Taos Scene is an excellent example of the work created during Vollmer’s time in Taos.

Portrait of a Male Nude, an assertive and intimate portrayal of a beach bather, is a well-conceived portrait by Dorothy Winslade. This circa-1935 oil painting is perfectly composed, depicting a subject that captures the viewer’s attention. The subject looks out, past the viewer, at someone or something the viewer can only speculate. An extremely versatile artist, Dorothy Winslade worked in oils, gouaches, and watercolors to create bold, richly-colored landscapes of the California coast and hills, and cityscapes of San Francisco, as well as wonderful still lifes and, as in Portrait of a Male Nude, portraits.

Isabel Hunter’s masterful pastel, The Court of Abundance, Panama-Pacific International Exposition, 1915, created during the Exposition, captures the design and beauty of this unique sculptural edifice. Born in 1865, Hunter primarily was a Bay Area artist who studied with William Keith and at the Art Students League in New York, among other schools. Hunter was equally facile with oil paint, winning awards in that medium, as she was with pastel and graphite.

The versatility of many of these artists also is exemplified by Elizabeth Eaton Burton. While she is well known for her work in the Arts and Crafts movement in California, producing lamps of hammered copper and sea shells, her 1933 Kasuga Taisha Shrine, Nara color wood block print reveals the artist’s breadth of talent. Burton had traveled to the Orient, including Japan, studying printmaking in 1933-1934. Her Japanese inspired watercolors and prints toured internationally through 1936.

Leslie Buck’s ca. 1935 exquisite oil painting Jimson Weed is so very realistic that each element virtually bursts off the canvas. First taught by, and then marrying, artist Claude Buck, Leslie Buck took her husband’s precise manner of painting to a new level.

Homesteading, a ca. 1945 etching and aquatint by Trude Hanscom, dramatically conveys the reality and harshness of life for the people huddled near their vehicle next to a deserted dirt road. While working in many media, she was well known for combining drypoint and aquatint in her etchings. Hanscom spent most of her life in the vicinity of Los Angeles and was well-exhibited and active in many local art circles.

The San Francisco Art Association’s 1947 Purchase Prize was awarded to Edna Stoddart for her gouache I Remember That Day. Stoddart was a Bay Area artist who received her education at Mills College, the University of California and other art schools in Northern California. I Remember That Day is a colorful and fanciful depiction of a mountain landscape divided by a water inlet featuring several small, empty boats.

Helen Seegert, a lifelong resident of Santa Barbara, was a true master of the color woodcut. Her late 1930s African Stripes, Evening Watch and Al Anocheser woodcuts are exceptional examples of the medium and convey their fanciful subjects with beauty and color in superb compositions. Considered an excellent printmaker, Seegert also was known for her sculptures, not to mention her fiercely independent spirit.

Then there is Ginger Osgood, whose 1954 serigraph Gower Street is highly imaginative with exceptional and lively applications of color. Osgood’s serigraphs are considered some of the best examples of the medium in existence and have been widely exhibited.

Finally, it is worth noting that Henrietta Shore’s Mexican Mother and Water Carrier lithographs reflect her travels and experiences in Mexico with Diego Rivera, Jose Orozco, Jean Charlot and others. Shore’s ca. 1925 Reclining Horse, a modernist approach to the depiction of a horse at rest, may be the only print of its kind in existence (see our prior 2018 exhibition about Shore).

Our Gallery’s website contains biographies of each artist that provide important background information for collectors and others. Most of these women artists were talented in a variety of media. In many cases we have selected prints or other works on paper as the primary medium, creating high value for our clients collecting these more modestly priced artworks.