by Steven Carlson, Curator
Welcome to another EFFIEgram tracing the art and life of Arizona’s earliest Impressionist desert landscape painter - Effie Anderson Smith (1869-1955).
In this issue: Art Prints of Effie’s most iconic Arizona desert landscape paintings will soon be available - and - details of our Effie Experience Weekend in Douglas at Thanksgiving.
But first…
Effie and the Election of 1934 - A Tale of Art & Two Well Connected Friends
Ninety years ago - Effie Anderson Smith threw herself into helping a friend win re-election. She did so wholeheartedly, even though her friend was from a different political party than the one Effie had been active in for decades. Effie believed in people, and what was best for Arizona. And in the unfolding economic disaster of the early 1930s with unemployment reaching 25%, Effie believed in the personal qualities of her friend, who had just become Arizona’s first Congresswoman.
I’d come to know more about Aunt Effie’s artistic abilities after my parents moved to the Phoenix area in 1980 and my Mother - an artist in her own right - came into possession of a couple of Effie’s paintings and a treasure trove of Effie’s papers, given to Mom when Effie’s son, Lewis Anderson Smith (Uncle Lewis) moved into assisted living. Aside from a few comments from Lewis about his own political views and activities discussed around the holiday dinner table, I had very little understanding of the depth of Aunt Effie’s political connections. It was mainly her art that I knew.
During the recent pandemic it occurred to me one research niche I hadn’t yet exhausted was looking into the papers of Effie’s most prominent friends, located in various archives. I thought there must be more correspondence, somewhere.
Almost on a whim in December 2020, I contacted the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson about a file I saw listed in the papers of Congresswoman Isabella Greenway. I knew there was a connection through Effie’s Tucson exhibits, and so I was pleasantly surprised to learn there was a folder with 60 pages of letters between the two friends ranging from 1930 to 1936. And those pages clarified a lot!
Mining Connections
Effie’s personal history with Isabella Dinsmore Greenway (1886-1953) went back to when she and husband John Campbell Greenway (1872-1926) lived in Bisbee, the greatest mining center in Southern Arizona during the years Effie lived and painted at her home in the small nearby mining camp at Pearce.
The Greenways and Smiths were both deeply involved in the mining industry. John Greenway was in charge of major mining properties across the country and in Southern Arizona including at Bisbee - A.Y. Smith was a very hands-on Superintendent and later President of the Commonwealth Mine at Pearce.
When Isabella and Effie first met, though Effie was 17 years her senior, they found much in common within their individual life journeys. Both were southern ladies by birth and Westerners by adoption, both had lost their first husbands tragically early and had re-married, and both had come west by way of the New Mexico Territory, before they each moved on to a completely new life in Arizona.
Effie’s and Isabella’s connections in their Arizona years (and earlier) actually run much deeper than I should recount here, so I’ll leave that for my forthcoming book length biography on Effie Anderson Smith.
For now - it can be said that the connections I’ve mentioned appear to have been sufficient to compel Isabella Greenway to ensure Effie was among the first artists she invited to provide paintings for her new Arizona Inn, and to exhibit there. Isabella had asked Effie for two paintings for her Inn at its opening in 1930 - and then there was an invitation to present a solo show. Effie would select 16 paintings for her first Arizona Inn exhibit opening January 25th, 1932. In fact, Effie’s exhibit was likely the first solo show by a woman artist at the Inn.
Art and Culture in Arizona Hotels
During the Arizona Inn’s early years, as was the practice of many hotels catering to people of means, Greenway and her management team invited artists, musicians, and retailers of fine things (table and bed linens, fashion and jewelry) to be part of the experience hotel guests encountered during their stay. The grand lobbies, art salons, mezzanines and sitting parlors of the west’s larger hotels were sometimes thought of as elegant cultural treasures and local gathering places. For this reason, Effie loved to exhibit for a week or more at a time at the Hotel Adams in Phoenix, the Hotel Paso del Norte in El Paso, the Hotel Gadsden in Douglas, El Tovar Lodge on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, La Fonda in Santa Fe, and in Tucson the Santa Rita Hotel and Arizona Inn. She was not alone in this among her fellow artists, but she had a special fondness for the social & cultural opportunities the great hotels offered in this era.
Soon the Arizona Inn became a favorite Tucson stop of the wealthy and famous traveling east or west by train, auto, and air. Its beautiful natural setting, surrounded mostly by open desert (at that time) and stunning views of the nearby Santa Catalina Mountains to the north, became widely known. For artists in a place like Arizona where art galleries and museums were largely absent, displaying your creations in the halls and gathering places of a luxury hotel was as good as it gets. And for Effie, whether the guests hailed from Arizona or elsewhere, they were more likely to be the target audience for her art.
Effie found success with the Arizona Inn’s wealthy clientele. In a February 1932 letter from Effie to Isabella during the final days of Effie’s exhibit at the Inn, Effie wrote of having sold four paintings and having received commissions for an additional four, despite the deteriorating economic conditions of the Depression. Effie went on to tell her ‘dear friend’ Isabella that the exhibit at the Inn had brought “fine results”.
The Hoovers and the Roosevelts
We know - in the same year that Effie first exhibited at Isabella Greenway’s Arizona Inn - that Effie was chair of the Women to Re-Elect Herbert Hoover campaign in Northern Cochise County in the run up to the 1932 Presidential Election. It was a decades long party affiliation that Effie had as a Republican, being elected in the early years of Arizona Statehood (1912) to the county and state Republican conventions (1920) as a delegate and also a speaker. Effie’s husband, Andrew Young (A.Y.) Smith, also had political views in accord with the Republicans, having run for State Senate -unsuccessfully - from Cochise County on that ticket in 1922.
It also must be stated that Effie’s support for the Hoover campaign was personal. One of her earliest California art mentors - May Bradford Shockley - with whom Effie is said to have studied in the San Francisco Bay Area as early as 1908 - was a close friend of future first lady Lou Henry Hoover while the two lived in London for time, and later as neighbors when Mrs. Hoover and her husband, the future President Herbert Hoover, began residing at Stanford from about 1916.
The establishment of the Hoover Institution (1919) at Stanford occurred around the time Effie’s son Lewis was training as an Army officer at the San Francisco Presidio Military Academy in 1917-18 and while Lewis attended and graduated in the Stanford class of 1922 with a degree in engineering from the department led by May’s husband - the renowned geologist William H. Shockley. These associations may have had something to do with Lewis Anderson Smith finding a position at the Bureau of Mines in Washington, D.C. during the Hoover Administration. We cannot confirm that, but it’s certainly possible that introductions may have been made.
How much Effie and husband A.Y. Smith rubbed elbows with the Hoovers and Shockleys while they were all in the vicinity of Stanford in the late 19-teens and early 1920s is not known, but as a Republican for most of her adult life it is likely Effie was an enthusiastic Hoover supporter - at least into the early 1930s.
After Effie’s beloved husband passed away in October of 1931, she seems to have continued on with her part of their well established civic roles and public life - including their Republican party activities - well into 1932, despite the deep sense of personal loss. By now the worsening economic slide was hitting Southern Arizona’s two main industries - mining and ranching - very hard, and Hoover’s increased taxes and tariffs didn’t seem to help as U.S. unemployment reached 20% and kept climbing.
When the Democrats won the White House in November 1932 and came to power in Washington with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inauguration on March 4th, 1933, it was not long before Roosevelt tapped Arizona Congressman Lewis Williams Douglas to be FDR’s director of the Bureau of the Budget.
Fellow Arizonan Isabella Greenway had seconded FDR’s nomination in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 1932 and campaigned heavily for him in Arizona. She was also credited with persuading the California delegation to throw their support behind FDR at the convention. So, Isabella had merited all the support she needed to run for, and win election in the fall of 1933 to fill out James W. Douglas’ Congressional term. She was sworn in on January 3rd, 1934.
That meant, of course, the campaign for the mid-term elections of 1934 would begin only a few short months away. At this point, the letters between Effie and Isabella take a turn - from art and purely personal matters to political topics.
The Women’s Network
What is clear is this - for Effie, friendship - and what was best for Arizona at this bewildering time - were more important than party affiliation - especially in the dire economic circumstances of the early 1930s. Effie had known and endured previous economic downturns - especially the five year depression of the 1890s in her native Arkansas and New Mexico. But this economic crash and depression were far worse.
And of course, with Effie being an active member and leader in various chapters of the Woman’s Clubs across Southern Arizona, Effie knew she could play a role in marshaling support for Isabella Greenway’s 1934 re-election in that network of contacts, as well as with her strong associations among leading Republicans in Cochise County, through her civic involvements and church groups and her connections in ranching and mining circles.
Any concerns of crossing party lines, if ever it was something that gave Effie pause, apparently soon fell by the wayside. And the 65 year old Effie sprang into action.
It should come as no surprise then that we have no paintings by Effie from 1934.
Effie on the Campaign Trail
By the summer of 1934 we see in letters between Effie and Isabella that Effie is speaking at rallies on behalf of Greenway and extolling Isabella’s accomplishments in congress for Arizona during her first months in office. Effie met with Democratic party delegates, Arizona’s Governor Benjamin Moeur and U.S. Senator Henry Ashurst on matters important to Greenway and her campaign. Effie mentions she and her son Lewis would be canvasing prominent Democrats and Republicans across Southern Arizona in support of Isabella Greenway’s re-election.
As a Democrat, Greenway had won election in late 1933 by a wide margin but in a somewhat shocking outcome for Arizona that saw the Republican candidate finish third behind a Socialist who came in second! Such was the economic situation in Arizona in the early 1930s when some had given up on the two main parties. Greenway’s election for a full term in the mid-terms of 1934 was resoundingly secured.
Effie, Isabella and Eleanor
Isabella’s connection to the Roosevelts was through both political sides of that family - primarily through her long friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt - having served as a bride’s maid at Eleanor’s wedding to Franklin - but also extending through Isabella’s late husband having served with Eleanor’s uncle Teddy in TR’s Rough Riders during the Spanish American War.
As a result - when Isabella invited Effie in November 1934 to write confidentially to her about all Effie was seeing and hearing across Arizona regarding the successes and failures of various New Deal programs from Cochise County to Yuma and the Colorado River (where Effie’s son Lewis had just found much needed employment in one of the government funded engineering projects) Effie was soon writing letters full of observations and insights to Congresswoman Greenway from conversations she’d had with both the transient unemployed and project workers who had found employment in the WPA and CCC programs. Effie delivered this intelligence to her friend Isabella likely realizing that it may go up the communications chain of the many women officials in FDR’s administration - possibly as high up as the Roosevelts themselves, given Isabella’s direct access to Eleanor.
Isabella’s Return to Tucson
Effie’s correspondence with Isabella in Washington, D.C. appears to have continued into April 1936 when it became known that she would not seek re-election to a second full term in Congress. As Arizona’s lone member of the House of Representatives, Isabella was becoming exhausted, according to accounts by her son some years later. She was, after all, a mother as well, and wanted to have more time for her family. Greenway stated she felt Arizona was in a better situation economically in mid-1936 when she made her decision, than it was when she was sworn into office in early 1934.
It is at this point that the chain of surviving official correspondence between Effie and Isabella Greenway as Arizona Congresswoman ends, with Effie expressing her admiration for Isabella’s accomplishments mixed with her concern that there was nobody of Isabella’s caliber to take her place. So popular was Greenway by 1936 that it was widely believed she could run unopposed for re-election to a second full term.
After leaving office Greenway traveled frequently between Tucson and New York, and remarried in 1939. Her political views had evolved by 1940 to the point that she was a supporter of Wendell Wilkie in the next Presidential election, believing FDR should not run for an unprecedented third term.
We don’t know where Effie’s political sentiments were by 1940. Her life seems once again to be fully absorbed by her art and teaching. When the Soviet Union invaded Finland in the Winter War of 1939 Effie was quick to supply a painting for the cause of fundraising in Tucson for the Finnish War Relief fund. She would again visit Tucson in 1942 related to her support of Red Cross Chapter activities there in the early years of World War II, but her once frequent Tucson visits eventually diminished.
Effie appears to have kept in touch with Isabella after Greenway left office, through at least 1938, as evidenced by Effie’s Arizona Inn exhibit and talk on March 5th of that year - which to our knowledge was Effie’s last large scale solo exhibit in Tucson. She had plans for a Los Angeles exhibit in 1942, but wartime fuel rationing and other restrictions would make that exhibit impossible.
How many times Effie and Isabella may have encountered one another in their final years - from the 1940s into the early 1950s is not known. But for a time - art and friendship brought together these two accomplished, dynamic and amazing women from different political camps - first in the cause of women in the arts - and later in the common cause of making life better for Arizonans during the Great Depression.
Spotting Effie’s Lost Art
It’s known that after Effie’s exhibits at the Arizona Inn she arranged with Isabella Greenway to leave a few paintings hanging in the halls for a longer period. We don’t know if Effie returned to collect them all or if any have become part of the Inn’s extensive permanent holdings - or - if they may have found their way into the private Greenway family quarters.
The next time you stay or dine at the Arizona Inn, take a look around and see if you spot one of Effie’s paintings there. If so, please let us know! Or for that matter, if you discover one anywhere else. We have lists of paintings by Effie in the E.A. Smith Archive that have not been seen in decades. They’re out there, waiting to be rediscovered!
Our Next Exhibit - Celebrating the Centennial of Chiricahua National Monument
Details about our forthcoming DOUGLAS exhibit over Thanksgiving weekend which includes Effie’s paintings of scenes in and around the Chiricahuas are on our website. More on our 3-days of exhibits and the Special Walking Tour of spots in Douglas key to Effie’s decade living and teaching there will be released in early November.
Art Prints of Effie’s Finest Paintings
Yes - at long last - after nearly 2 1/2 years of working with a wonderful LA Art Photographer and finding a Print House that can do Effie’s colors justice - we will be offering six of E.A. Smith’s finest desert landscapes on canvas as Thank You Gifts for your generous gift of financial support.
The last color proofs of these Effie fine art prints are on the way to us so we can double check and give our final approval before they become available in the coming weeks. More about this in next month’s EFFIEgram.
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