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).
With this edition we warmly WELCOME all NEW READERS who signed up for our EFFIEgram during our 3-day EFFIE EXPERIENCE exhibits in Douglas over Thanksgiving Weekend - November 29th to December 1st - as well as everyone who has joined us over the past year by finding your way to us through our website or directly on Substack where our EFFIEgram Archive resides online.
Our Thanksgiving 2024 Exhibits in Douglas…
This year is the third time in recent years that our growing Effie Anderson Smith Art Collection has been exhibited over Thanksgiving Weekend in Cochise County - somewhat of a sporadic tradition for us now. Perviously we had a small show in 2011 at Old Pearce Heritage Days inside the old Mercantile, and a few years later we again exhibited in Pearce over Thanksgiving Weekend 2019 in Effie’s former home there as part of our celebration of her 150th Birthday Anniversary exhibits.
This year we planned an exhibit in the other Cochise County town central to Effie’s artistic and family life - the border city of Douglas. Here are a few photos from our main show hosted by our new friends Allyson and Dale Armstrong at their exquisite Studio 917 Gallery space on G Avenue. I say ‘main’ because we also had Effie related art displays at two other Douglas venues simultaneously, which were part of our Effie Experience Walking Tour on Saturday.
Thanks to Studio 917’s publicity and social media posts - and even more importantly - their strong relationships with the many visitors and patrons of their past and recent exhibits - as well as their intriguing and growing array of local area contemporary artists who have chosen to make Douglas and beautiful Cochise County their creative home, we were assured of a steady stream of visitors to our 3-days of historic exhibits of Effie’s art. Effie’s view of the Sulphur Springs Valley as her chosen desert ‘paradise’ is apparently a timeless impression still resonating with artists who come there to paint and create to this day.
One of the great things about sharing Effie’s paintings with people in Cochise County is they almost immediately are recognized by exhibit visitors as vistas they see in their daily lives and activities. Elsewhere, even in Tucson - many of Effie’s paintings (aside from the Grand Canyon works) aren’t recognized in the same way. They appeal as beautiful impressions of the Arizona desert, but the sense of place is more obvious to Douglas and Cochise County people. That was our experience again bringing these paintings ‘home’ to where many of them were created between 80 and 100+ years ago!
By the way, as our Effie exhibit over Thanksgiving weekend demonstrated, the nearby Chiricahua Mountains were the inspiration for many of Effie Anderson Smith’s best paintings. Our friends at Studio 917 have resumed their great exhibit Celebrating the Chiricahua Mountains - now through December 28th - highlighting the Chiricahua National Monument’s 100th Anniversary. I am sure Effie would encourage you to stop by Studio 917 and support the artists active in Cochise County on exhibit now!
The Effie Experience Walking Tour we conducted to other arts and historical venues in Douglas departed Studio 917 in two groups between 1 and 2pm on Saturday, visiting a display of 10 other Effie paintings on view at the Douglas Historical Society in the Douglas-Williams House (it’s on permanent display there!) as well as paintings by 5 of Effie’s more accomplished Douglas women art students from her Palette and Brush Club Meetings in the 1940s - that display being a one-day only exhibit at the Douglas Art Association’s Gallery.
If you’d like to retrace the steps of our Walking Tour on your own when you are next in Douglas, go to the EXHIBITS page of the Effie Anderson Smith website and under our November 2024 section you will see a copy of the map for your reference.
Thanks to ALL Effie’s Douglas Friends, those of you we met for the first time - and those who we’ve seen and met at past exhibits - for making our Thanksgiving Weekend in Douglas a very successful and memorable time.
SPECIAL THANKS to our wonderful hosts Allyson and Dale Armstrong for opening their Studio 917 Gallery to Effie so we could re-connect with art lovers in one of the towns Effie loved best in Arizona, and where she chose to live, paint, teach and operate her own art studio (beginning at age 72!) in what became her most prolific years of her active life as an artist (c. 1941-1950).
Effie’s Holiday Traditions - what we know…
Effie and husband Andrew Young Smith were usually at home in Pearce during the Christmas holidays for most years from the time they settled there in 1896 until A.Y.’s passing in 1931. This is confirmed by the local newspapers - the Arizona Range News and the Courtland Arizonan. I would love to tell you - as a great-grand nephew of the artist - what they ate for holiday meals or the kind of gifts they exchanged, or share some photos of those times with you. Sadly, almost none of that has survived. Except for these of the Smith’s one child who lived to adulthood - son Lewis - as a young boy.
The first photo below is inscribed with the words ‘Making Xmas Money’ and another shows a new saddle Lewis was given - probably at that same Christmas - c. 1904. He’s about age 5 here. That’s the Pearce Mine Hill in the background. And the porch - later screened in - of what we call Smith House no 2 in the family - which they lived in from 1897-1929 until it was destroyed by fire. But that’s another story.
From later years - we know that Effie spent Christmas 1931 at the home of her Pastor in Douglas - the Rev. Ernest Simonson and his wife Alberta of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church. It was the first Christmas after A.Y. Smith had passed away a few weeks before in October. And we know Effie’s Thanksgiving holiday of 1932 was spent at the home of old friends from nearby Courtland who by then had moved to Tucson.
Effie seems to have settled back into Christmas at home in Pearce after the return of her son Lewis to Pearce as his job came to an end at the Bureau of Mines in Washington, D.C. as the Hoover administration went out of office in 1933. Lewis Anderson Smith (1898-1986) was there with Effie for a few years in the early to mid-30s as the Great Depression hit hard, and his presence is reflected in her notes in holiday cards to friends in those years. Within a couple years of his return, however, he had found a WPA job in an engineering project on the Colorado River near Yuma. Effie would visit him often there.
Eventually Effie began a new holiday tradition of making an annual trek to Eastern Arizona - to reside and paint seasonally at the home of her son and his bride - Norma - in Morenci where Lewis had begun working as a mining engineer for Phelps Dodge circa 1937.
Only a few of Effie’s paintings from her seasonal residencies in Morenci have emerged that can be clearly identified.
We know from newspaper reports that Effie would often return with a dozen or more new paintings from her time in Morenci and Clifton during the holidays there which would last from November into the early months of the following year, when she would return to Pearce in the late 1930s - or in the 1940s to Douglas.
Effie was quite particular in what she would and would not paint. She rarely included any evidence of human activity or intervention in her landscapes, unless the painting was a commission. She had an aversion for painting any rock formation that reminded people of the face of a human or the shape of an animal. She called those freaks of nature - and ‘one does not paint a freak’ she is quoted as saying to a reporter from the Douglas Daily Dispatch.
We wonder how she felt about snowfall. Pearce and much of Cochise County is at or above 4500 ft. It is not unusual for snow to come to Pearce in the winter. Perhaps she did not like painting en plein air in snow. To this day, no paintings of hers including snowfall or a hint of snow - not even snow on distant mountains - have emerged. It’s another Effie mystery (there are many) that perhaps we can hope may be demystified by some letters or writings yet to be uncovered in an archive or someone’s family papers!
Effie Anderson Smith Art Prints are Coming - SOON!
Next Weekend we will be in touch about something that has been in the works for over two years. Canvas Print Reproductions of some of Effie’s finest Arizona desert landscapes. Please watch for our year end EFFIEgram coming in a few days in which we will tell you how YOU can help the Effie Anderson Smith Museum and Archive bring Effie’s art to new audiences - and for your tax deductible contributions receive a Thank You Gift of a print from us for your support.
More on that in a few days. For now..
From all of us at the Effie Anderson Smith Museum and Archive - we wish you a very MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR - and best holiday greetings to those of you celebrating other holiday traditions.