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Frances Hammell Gearhart

Date: 1929

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1996.21

Text Entries: Frances Hammell Gearhart is best known for her nuanced woodblock and watercolor depictions of the California landscape, for which she developed a lifelong love following her father, a beekeeper, on his honey-gathering treks near Pasadena. She was the oldest of three unmarried sisters, all of whom taught in the Los Angeles public schools and later became proficient in the art of woodblock prints; Frances first exhibited her work when she was forty-two years old. She was the only one of the three sisters who did not study with Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922), the influential painter, printmaker and teacher whose book Composition of 1899 cultivated widespread interest in this country in abstract principles of design, especially those of traditional Japanese art. Nevertheless, her spare and atmospheric woodblock prints, suffused with the delicate colors of Japanese prints, reveal a deep appreciation for Dow's teachings.

Frances Hammell Gearhart

Date: 1936–37

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1996.22

Text Entries: Frances Hammell Gearhart is best known for her nuanced woodblock and watercolor depictions of the California landscape, for which she developed a lifelong love following her father, a beekeeper, on his honey-gathering treks near Pasadena. She was the oldest of three unmarried sisters, all of whom taught in the Los Angeles public schools and later became proficient in the art of woodblock prints; Frances first exhibited her work when she was forty-two years old. She was the only one of the three sisters who did not study with Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922), the influential painter, printmaker and teacher whose book Composition of 1899 cultivated widespread interest in this country in abstract principles of design, especially those of traditional Japanese art. Nevertheless, her spare and atmospheric woodblock prints, suffused with the delicate colors of Japanese prints, reveal a deep appreciation for Dow's teachings.