Lucy Scott Bower (1864-1934) Moonlit Harbor Oil on Board P3404
A lovely imagist nocturne by an American who make her mark in Europe. The affectionate memoir below is definitely worth a read.
The art measures 21 1/2" x 17 1/2" and the charming period frame is 26" x 29".
Bower, Lucy Scott (1864-1934) by Dorothy Pownall
Iowa City – When Lucy Scott Bower, one of this generation’s most noted feminine artists, died in Paris last fall, few knew that this 70 year old woman was a native Iowan.
For years she had been associated with artistic groups in New York and France, known to connoisseurs for her colorful harbor scenes, picturesque fishermen and quaint Brittany peasants, but she was born in the little town of Rochester, Ia., which lies sleepily beside the Cedar river near Springdale. Many years of her life were spent in France, but she always considered herself an Iowan, and recalled school days in West Liberty where she was graduated from high school.
Now she is to be represented in the art center which is growing at the University of Iowa, according to an announcement just made by R.H. Fitzgerald, director of the School of Fine Arts. Red Sails, one of Mrs. Bower’s best known paintings, will be hung next week in the Iowa Memorial Union, a gift to the university from the artist’s niece, Mrs. H.G. Deming, Lincoln, Neb. Mrs. Deming also has given to the university another typical Bower painting, a composition which includes crooked buildings, gay-clad peasant and engaging pigs.
Red Sails, mentioned in Who’s Who as one of Lucy Scott Bower’s most noted works, was painted at Gloucester harbor where the artist spent several summers. The red sails of the fishing boat practically fill the canvas, with busy fishermen in the foreground, the picture done with vigor and boldness which characterizes her work. Both paintings will be prominently displayed as a memorial to the former Iowan.
Mrs. Deming, who is the nearest relative of the childless artist, recently presented two paintings to the high school and library at West Liberty, in memory of the schools distinguished alumna.
Lucy Scott Bower worked hard for the honors, which came to her. From West Liberty she turned her face toward the art centers of the day. The Art Institute of Chicago* was her first stop; later she was enrolled in the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts*, and finally became a student of William Merritt Chase in the New York School of Art*.
Rochester, Iowa was far behind her now, and Paris was her goal. In the Academy Julian* she studied with Leon Fleury and Jules Lefebvre. Later, in the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere*, Menard and Simon were her instructors. They saw in her work the virility and ruggedness many critics have called masculine. One of her earliest French painting, Knitters in the Streets of Vitre, was purchased by the French government to hang in the old feudal castle at Vitre. Her Brittany coast scenes were enthusiastically when exhibited at Beaux Arts in Paris and the Royal Academy, London.
Perhaps her memory of the rural valley where she lived as a child gave Mrs. Bower the sympathy she felt toward the simple peasants and fisher folk of the French villages. Her niece, whom she visited rarely, but to whom she wrote voluminously, recalls her as humorous and kindly, with an encompassing love for people. She liked best to paint dock scenes, fishermen mending their nets, tipsy buildings, watery vistas, colorful vegetable markets, or fishing boats with bright sails. Her works were acclaimed in this country and abroad where she exhibited frequently. She was represented many times in the Academy of Design, of which she once wrote, “Like Heaven, it is hard to enter here.”
Her New York friends included Anne Morgan and Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt, with whom she worked for the establishment of the American Women’s Association, and organization of painters, sculptors, writers, and others prominent in fields of feminine endeavcor. When the clubhouse fot this group was built, Lucy Scott Bowers was commissioned to do a mural for it, in which her favorite pigs and peasants are pleasantly intermingled.
Her last exhibit in New York, in 1933, was in the Fifteen Gallery and received praise from metropolitan art critics. The New York Times commented upon “curiously Cezannish touches, though the pictures are emphatically her own.”
The former Iowan belonged to the New York Society for Artists*; the European Chapter of the American Artists Professional League; the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors*; North Shore Art Association*; Pen and Brush club and the Beaux and Arc-en-Ciel in Paris; the Royal Academy, London*; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Albright Galleries in Buffalo and the Salon in Chicago. A group of her paintings was shown in Washington during the Hoover inaugural.
Perhaps there are a few old friends still in Rochester, Iowa, who can remember the little girl who was determined to be an artist. They and many others will pay tribute to the genius of Lucy Scott Bower when they view Red Sails, and her quaint peasant scene, in the permanent art collection at the University of Iowa.
Source:
The Gazette (Newspaper) (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) 23 Jul 1935.
Submitted by Edward P. Bentley, Art Researcher and Historian, Greenville, Michigan.
