Sunday, May 24, 2015

Henrietta Shore: California Modernist

Henrietta Shore Huntington Art Collection
As an art historian and appraiser with a specialization in California art -- I am always looking for paintings by interesting women artists during the modern period. One of my favorite modernists is Henrietta Shore.

Henrietta Mary Shore (1880-1963) was born in Toronto, Canada. When she decided to be an artist, she went to New York City to gain an art degree. She attended The Art Students League and learned American realist painting under the mentorship of the great artists Robert Henri and William Merritt Chase. Shore also travelled to London to attend Heatherly Art School as a student of John Singer Sargent. She learned her foundations of art from some of the very best 20th century American artists.

Shore was a founding member of the New York Society of Women Artists. But rather than continuing with realism she began exploring modernism. Often likened to Georgia O'Keeffe of the same period, she had a style that also used bold colors, sinuous lines and foreshortening. Henrietta Shore also happened to be interested botanical studies. Her work is now known as Abstract Realism.

In 1913, Shore was bewitched by Los Angeles and moved there. She was a founder of the Los Angeles Society of Modern Artists. West Coast modernists of the period included Mabel Alvarez, Belle Baranceanu, Elanor Colburn, and Helen Lundeberg, who explored technique, color, and composition-- but continued to paint realist subjects. Shore won a silver medal at the 1915 Pan-American Exposition in San Diego. She and her colleague, Helena Dunlap partook in a two-person exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum (LACMA).

Shore’s had earned a strong reputation as an artist and a retrospective of her work was held at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. In 1924, she was chosen to be one of 25 American women represented women in Paris' exhibition. She also traveled to Mexico where she painted portraits of the famous artists Jose Orozco, Jean Charlot, and others. 

Upon returning to California, Henrietta Shore met photographer Edward Weston who made series of photographs based on Shore’s paintings. Shore eventually settled in Carmel, CA and continued to paint. During the Great Depression, Shore worked for the Treasury Relief Art Project and completed murals at the Monterey post office and another at the Santa Cruz post office.

Contact us with any artworks you think might be paintings by Henrietta Shore.

No comments:

Post a Comment