Researcher Seeking Women Artists, 1840–1940, White Mountains, NH

Martha Safford (1850–1912), “White Mountains.”

CORAL GABLES, FLA. — There is a growing body of evidence that women were actively painting landscapes in the White Mountains, as well as the Catskills and the Hudson River Valley. in the Nineteenth Century. Dolly MacIntyre, who first began to research this overlooked component of American history in 1989, wrote her master’s thesis on the topic and curated a small show at the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College in 1990.

The topic was put on the back burner in the intervening years, but MacIntyre has recently rekindled her research, inspired by the work of independent filmmaker Andrea Melville, who is making a documentary on the artists and writers of the White Mountains and by the current exhibit at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site called, “Remember the Ladies: Women Artists of the Hudson River School,” which reveals the tip of the iceberg and displays work by women quite as glorious as that of their male counterparts.

MacIntyre is now planning an exhibition and catalog of White Mountain art to further debunk the myth that there were no women landscape painters. She wants to locate work by such women, much of which she is sure is stored in basements and attics of the artists’ descendants.

If you have any information or possibly works by women artists of the Nineteenth Century, please contact MacIntyre at 409 Viscaya Avenue, Coral Gables, FL 33134 or macbirch@aol.com.