Specifics
The MacDowell Colony

Lilla Cabot Perry
Faith Ringgold

The MacDowell Colony was founded in Peterborough, New Hampshire in 1907. Macdowell was not a town or summer resort, but a purposefully fabricated established location. The Colony's mission today, as it was then, is to provide an environment in which creative artists are free to pursue their work without interruption. Over 200 visual artists, writers, composers, photographers, printmakers, filmmakers, architects, interdisciplinary artists, and those collaborating on creative works go to the Colony each year from all parts of the United States and abroad. In addition to ideal working conditions, artists-in-residence benefit from the experience of living in a community of exceptional artists. Each of these artists must apply and be selected through a competitive process.

Edward and Marian MacDowell founded the Colony. Edward was a composer, pianist and founder of the American Academy in Rome, Italy. From his own experience, he knew that artists working in different disciplines could enhance one another’s artistic life. The composer’s own productivity in his log cabin studio in Peterborough inspired Edward and his wife to establish a community for fellow artists. They felt that artists needed a retreat where they could focus without distraction on their work.

The MacDowell Colony offers 32 artists studios in secluded cabins and cottages scattered throughout the wooded grounds. Each year the Colony provides space for 200 creative artists from the United States and overseas. Visual artists, architects, writers, composers and filmmakers apply for residencies of up to two months. Once selected, artists are provided with a studio, free from distractions to focus exclusively on their own body of work.

Each year the MacDowell Colony presents the Edward MacDowell Medal to an American artist whose work is judged to have made an outstanding contribution to our nation’s culture. Past winners of the medal whose work is represented in the Currier’s collection include Alexander Calder, Edward Hopper, Louise Nevelson and Georgia O’Keeffe. The poet Robert Frost and the author Thornton Wilder were also medal winners.

MacDowell Colony Artists

Two artists who were in residence at MacDowell are Lilla Cabot Perry and Faith Ringgold. Perry visited MacDowell in 1918 and Ringgold in 1982, several decades apart.

Lilla Cabot Perry (1848-1933) was an American Impressionist painter. As a member of a distinguished Boston family who received her first formal art training at age 36, Perry was an unlikely candidate to become a professional artist. Yet Perry did pursue a career as a painter and became a devotee of the French movement known as Impressionism, establishing a strong reputation as an impressionist painter and poet, both in the United States and Japan.

Perry traveled extensively with her husband and daughters. She studied painting in Europe and saw her first Impressionist work in 1889 at age 41. That experience changed her life dramatically. She sought out Claude Monet who befriended her. For numerous summers, Perry and her family rented a house at Giverny, in close proximity to Monet. In addition, Perry was one of Monet’s principal advocates in New England. In the United States, Perry worked in Boston during the year and on a farm in Hancock, New Hampshire during the summers. She also lived several years in Japan, as her husband taught at a university in Tokyo. Here she studied some of the chief sources of Impressionism, Japanese fabrics and prints.

Her painting The Black Hat (1914) is one of a group of images of women that Perry produced during the second decade of the 20 th century. In several of these works, her subjects wear elaborate hats that draw attention to their expressions. The female in the painting is dressed in a black gown with a large velvet black hat. The woman’s expression is thoughtful and contemplative, almost melancholy. Like other artists associated with the Boston school, such as Edmund Tarbell and Frank Benson, Perry often had family members pose for her, or, she used professional models. For this painting, it is likely she used one of her models.

Like her male counterparts, Perry became known for her idealized images of women. These artists had a tendency to portray women as an aesthetic ideal, decorative and ladylike. Wearing stylish clothing, the women are shown occupied with genteel feminine activities such as playing music, arranging flowers, or simply meditating.

Faith Ringgold, (born in 1930) a painter, mixed media sculptor, performance artist and writer was born in Harlem, New York, and began her artistic career in the 1970s. Today, she is best known for her painted quilt stories, art work that combines painting, quilted fabric and storytelling. The Currier’s The Bitter Nest V: The Homecoming is an example of her narrative quilt making. The stories she tells are often inspired by her own experiences as an African-American woman. Ringgold learned to sew fabrics from her mother, a fashion designer. The quilting tradition was passed down from her great- great grandmother, a slave in her youth, who made quilts for her white masters. Made of acrylic on canvas and pieced fabric, the work reflects a strong use of color, pattern and design and depicts a social gathering of four people, three women and one man. (Note: To learn more about the story of The Bitter Nest series, click here.)

Ringgold’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in the United States, Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East, and Africa and her work can be found in many public and private collections. She is the recipient of more than 75 awards including fifteen Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degrees and many fellowships and grants. Ringgold is also the author and illustrator of nine children’s books.

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