Fanny Adele Watson (April 30, 1873 – March 23, 1947) was an American painter and lithographer. She lived and worked for much of her life in Pasadena, California.[4] Her work is best known for its spectral female figures and anthropomorphic landscapes.[4][5][6]
Life and Career
Watson was born on April 30, 1873 in Toledo, Ohio.[7] Her family moved to Pasadena in 1880, after the death of her father. As a young adult, Watson studied at the Art Students League of New York before returning to California in 1917. She also traveled to Paris and became a pupil of Raphael Collin.[6][8]
Throughout her life, Watson was interested in the spiritual dimension of nature and the beauty of the natural world,[4] a subject that also greatly interested the poet and artist Kahlil Gibran, with whom she became friends.[6][9] Gibran drew a portrait of her in graphite in 1926.[6][10]
Taking inspiration from some of Arthur B. Davies's quasi-symbolist paintings (e.g., A Measure of Dreams), Watson's early work is frequently characterized by otherworldly nude female figures set in natural landscapes.[4][9] Beginning around the 1930s, her later paintings and lithographs began to blend landscape and the human form together, so that anthropomorphic figures seem to emerge out of dreamlike terrain.[18][9] This shift in Watson's work occurred predominantly in response to her experience of the landscapes of Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park.[4][9][18] She made several similar coastal scenes as well,[18][19][20] some of which depict the coast of Maine.[21]
Critical Reception
Contemporaneous reviews of Watson's art were often positive. Reviewing an exhibition of Watson's work in 1918, an article in American Art News describes "unworldly beings" in her paintings that imbue them with a "spiritual impulse;" the article goes on to praise Watson's "dramatic, epic and pageant sense for conveying her thoughts through her work."[5] A 1924 article in The Art News describes a San Diego exhibition of "sixteen canvases of mystical subjects," which it characterizes as "very low tone and beautiful in color."[16]
Arthur Millier, writing for the Los Angeles Times in 1933 about Watson's exhibit of paintings and painted screens, suggests that "Miss Watson sees landscape in terms of the soul of man."[22] Millier notes that "this is her first Los Angeles showing of her works which have gained favor in the East."[22]
There was another Adele Watson, who was a contemporary actress: Adele Watson (1890-1933) from Minnesota starred in over 20 films in the 1920s–1930s.[31]
^Hughes, Edan. "Adele Watson". CalART.com. Archived from the original on 1 July 2023. Retrieved 30 June 2023.
^ abcdFort, Ilene Susan (1995). "The Adventuresome, the Eccentrics, and the Dreamers: Women Modernists of Southern California". In Trenton, Patricia (ed.). Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945 (1st ed.). University of California Press. pp. 75–106. ISBN9780520202030.
^"Pasadena Painter Given Plaudits: Adele Watson's Landscapes Impress New York; Brooklyn 'Eagle' Comments on Rhythmic Beauty Expressed on Canvas Shown at Her First Metropolitan Exhibition--Varying Ideals Contrasted". Los Angeles Times. 7 January 1917. pp. III 4.
^"Adele Watson, Painter, Dies". Los Angeles Times. 24 March 1947. p. 5. ISSN0458-3035. Miss Adele Watson, noted painter and daughter of early Southern California family, died yesterday at Huntington Memorial Hospital, Pasadena, after a brief illness.
^ abMiller, Arthur (9 April 1933). "Reviews of Local Music and Art: Woman Painter's Vision Lends Wings to Landscape Adele Watson Peoples Earth With Poetic Beings; Pasadena Academy Sponsors Large Show; Other Exhibits". Los Angeles Times. pp. A6.
^"In the Galleries: Sun Dominates Mood of Crown's Canvases". Los Angeles Times. 1 February 1953. pp. D8. The [Pasadena Art Institute] also devotes considerable space to a retrospective exhibition of the paintings, drawings and prints of Adele Watson...
