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).
An Effie painting - not exhibited publicly since the 1940s - comes ‘home’ to join others in the Effie Anderson Smith Museum Collection.
Whenever I begin setting up any of our traveling one-day displays of Effie Anderson Smith paintings - or hang a new show for an extended exhibit in a host museum - I admit to a sense of excitement. The thought of someone seeing a number of Effie’s art works in one place for the first time and making a connection with another painting by her that they have seen elsewhere … and may cause them to come forward with a painting by Aunt Effie - is always a possibility.
It has happened several times in our many Arizona exhibits over the years - and a variation of this happened again recently - this time as part of our first ever New Mexico exhibit in Deming on March 17th. This time, the initial connection came through our website a few years back, but our first New Mexico exhibit provided the occasion for this painting to be seen publicly for the first time in decades.
Along with the hope and expectation of a possible new discovery comes the enjoyment I get from the look on people’s faces when they see Effie’s paintings and say… “she’s from here?” Made her life here? Taught school here? Painted here?
Sometimes - when a new painting emerges from the shadows of time and obscurity prompted by one of our exhibits - it feels like a new discovery because it has been in the hands of successive generations of one family since the artist sold or gifted it to some member of that family long ago. And very often, it’s a family that Effie was friends with since Territorial days - even early Pioneer days.
It’s also often the case that the owners have never seen their Effie Anderson Smith painting along side any other paintings by Effie. In the case of the wonderful painting of the scene along the road going into Cochise Stronghold brought to us recently at our Deming exhibit, we could easily see Effie’s signature at the lower right, but not a date. Due to the color palette of this painting which leans more toward the earth tones of Effie’s paintings during her Douglas period - and especially the upward swirl of clouds which Effie more often included in her paintings from the 40s into the early 1950s - I thought it was most likely that this painting is a work of her later maturity, rather than the early years.
Without being completely sure about my supposition that it’s likely from the 1940s, when I returned home I decided to place this newcomer to our Effie Anderson Smith Museum collection next to two other paintings in the Collection with similar palette, plant life and cloud depictions.
It seemed these paintings almost immediately started talking to each other - as I like to say. And it is clear they speak the same language. In the near future, a careful surface cleaning by one of our highly skilled friends in the art conservation world will perhaps reveal for us a date that Effie inscribed - which may be currently obscured by decades of residue that all art works tend to accumulate - or simply under the lip of the frame.
I first experienced this phenomenon of paintings talking to each other when I invited 16 individuals and institutions to loan 46 paintings for our amazing Tucson Desert Art Museum retrospective exhibit of Effie Anderson Smith’s art in her 150th birthday anniversary year in 2019.
Most of the paintings that were loaned had either hung alone in someone’s home for decades, or in a few cases along side one or two other Effie paintings - often not from the same period. Bringing 46 of her paintings into the same gallery - for the largest exhibit of her art ever seen - soon that gallery seemed to be absolutely humming with a harmonic conversation of color - even when the room was empty of people. You often can’t tell what a painting is saying by just viewing it for a few minutes. You need time.
When you have the luxury of living with it - as I did, in a way - while those 46 paintings were on display for 4 months in 2019 - anyone who spends any time in that room - who has any emotional sympathy or fondness for the desert - can feel the energy created by the proximity of this many which the Tucson Desert Art Museum’s staff hung so sensitively.
I’ll save it for another time to attempt to recreate for you the power of that exhibit with photos - but I feel it’s clear that hanging paintings in any exhibit - and being sensitive to which ones are talking to each other - can create an aggregate energy often far more resonant than the actual number of paintings in the gallery.
Our new friend - Mary Sweetser Hayes - a Deming native who inherited this Cave Creek Canyon painting from her Mother, who in turn inherited it from her Mother - has kindly gifted it to the Effie Anderson Smith Museum and Archive to become part of our collection. It was an honor to meet Mary after years of sporadic correspondence about Deming, our family histories in the area, and this painting. Mary drove many hours to Deming from her home in Northern New Mexico with this painting so it could be displayed for the first time publicly during our Deming exhibit on March 17th. How WONDERFUL is that?
Mary bears a striking resemblance to her late Mother and delights in the comparison. It was fun to meet her and display this painting for the first time - immediately as Mary presented it to us - after having known it only through photos Mary so kindly sent a few years back when she was researching it, and got in touch with me through the E. A. Smith Archive website.
With these wonderful first exhibits of 2024 in Deming and Willcox just completed, I am spending a bit of time each day admiring and studying this intriguing depiction by Effie of a canyon so close to her home of 45 years in Pearce - a scene she painted dozens of times over the years - but never in quite the same way.
Founding French Impressionist Claude Monet created his colorful emotional response on canvas to the facade of Rouen Cathedral in different light, times of day, and season.
The California Impressionists, with whom Effie trained, had their own approach to their surroundings.
In Effie’s case, her cathedral was in the architecture of the raw natural beauty she saw in the rock facade of the canyon known as Cochise Stronghold in the Dragoon Mountains, in the entrance to Cave Creek Canyon in the Chiricahua Mountains, in the Superstition Mountains, at Sedona, in mountains around Clifton, in scenes along the Coronado Trail - and most impressive of all, Effie’s series of 22 known paintings of the Grand Canyon.
That said, she probably painted the Stronghold more times than any of her other cathedrals because of its proximity to her home. On any given day she could get to a spot fairly quickly on horseback or car where she had a good vantage point to paint it again and again. She could even see it from the windows of her house in Pearce.
Photos of Our First Exhibits of 2024 - in Deming and Willcox
In closing - a few images below of our March 17th exhibit (including a talk) at the Deming Arts Center, presented in cooperation with the Deming Arts Council in their beautiful gallery, which opened its fabulous Quilt Show by local artisans a couple weeks earlier.
I was delighted to greet 35 people in Deming who - in some cases - told of having driven a considerable distance on that Sunday to see our Effie Anderson Smith exhibit - thanks to publicity by the gallery in the Deming Headlight and in the Deming Old Timer’s group on Facebook. I also was pleased by the strong interest and intriguing questions many Deming people and New Mexicans in attendance had for me about Effie, her life there in Deming (1894-95) and the Andersons who resided in Southwest New Mexico when she came there as a 25 year old widow, before she met her new (second) husband - Andrew Young Smith. Together they went on to a new life in Arizona where Andrew would transition into mining and Effie would evolve her art and paint all the the canvases she became known for. And yet, we know there are paintings from her New Mexico years and subsequent visits, which are listed in newspaper accounts and in her exhibit programs. Note painting no. 13 in this 1931 Washington DC exhibit.
A few days before our Deming exhibit - on March 14th - our Willcox exhibit was part of the Sulphur Springs Valley Historical Society’s once a month Brown Bag Talks at Noon - and I was pleased to present the art and life of Effie Anderson Smith to their membership in the newly created theater space in what is now know as The Palace of Theater and Art - a great space for offering art classes, showing movies and other presentations. Our Willcox exhibit was equally well attended with about 20 people present for my talk and over 30 coming in to see the exhibit itself that ran from 10a-4p.
Thank you for your interest in the Dean of Arizona Women Artists, Pioneer Painter Effie Anderson Smith (1869-1955). I look forward to seeing you at a future exhibit!
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