Agnes Pelton: Difference between revisions
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[[File:Agnes Pelton in her studio.jpg|thumb|alt=Agnes Pelton in her studio|Agnes Pelton in her studio]] | [[File:Agnes Pelton in her studio.jpg|thumb|alt=Agnes Pelton in her studio|Agnes Pelton in her studio]] | ||
'''Agnes Lawrence Pelton''' was an American modernist painter known for her desert landscapes and visionary abstract compositions that communicated a personal spiritual interest. | |||
==Personal Life and Education== | ==Personal Life and Education== | ||
Agnes Pelton was born on August 22, 1881 in Stuttgart, Germany to American parents. After the death of her father, she moved with her mother to Brooklyn, NY in 1890. Her mother, Florence, operated the Pelton School of Music and home schooled Agnes who suffered from poor health as a child. <ref> | Agnes Pelton was born on [[August 22]], 1881 in Stuttgart, Germany to American parents. After the death of her father, she moved with her mother to Brooklyn, NY in 1890. Her mother, Florence, operated the Pelton School of Music and home schooled Agnes who suffered from poor health as a child. <ref>Women Artists of the American West, Agnes Pelton and Florence Miller-Pierce, The Two Women in the Transcendental Painting Group, Biographies by Tiska Blankenship.</ref> | ||
Agnes first learned piano, and then added art classes at the Pratt Institute, graduating in 1900 at the age of 19. She continued to study landscape painting under instructor Arthur Wesley Dow, who later taught Georgia O’Keeffe. She also studied in Italy in 1910 under another Pratt instructor, Hamilton Easter Field, focusing on daily life drawing and Italian painters. | Agnes first learned piano, and then added art classes at the Pratt Institute, graduating in 1900 at the age of 19. She continued to study landscape painting under instructor Arthur Wesley Dow, who later taught Georgia O’Keeffe. She also studied in Italy in 1910 under another Pratt instructor, Hamilton Easter Field, focusing on daily life drawing and Italian painters. | ||
She set up a studio in Greenwich Village. In 1919, she visited Mabel Dodge Sterne (later Luhan), a patron of the arts, in Taos, NM and began to focus on portraits and landscape oil paintings. After the death of her mother in 1921, she moved to Long Island to be closer to nature and lived in a wind mill. | She set up a studio in Greenwich Village. In 1919, she visited Mabel Dodge Sterne (later Luhan), a patron of the arts, in Taos, NM and began to focus on portraits and landscape oil paintings. After the death of her mother in 1921, she moved to Long Island to be closer to nature and lived in a wind mill. It is here that she created her first abstract works, beginning in 1926. She traveled to Hawaii, New Hampshire, Beiruit, Syria, Georgia, and Pasadena. In 1931, she moved to Cathedral City in the California desert where she lived until her death in 1961. | ||
==Involvement with Theosophy== | ==Involvement with Theosophy== | ||
Though not a formal member of the Theosophical Society, she was influenced by the works of Helena Blavatsky and Annie Besant. She was also influenced by the writings of [[Wassily Kandinsky]], Concerning the Spiritual in Art. | Though not a formal member of the Theosophical Society, she was influenced by the works of [[Helena Petrovna Blavatsky|Helena Blavatsky]] and read [[The Key to Theosophy (book)|''The Key to Theosophy'']] early on.<ref>Art and Life Illuminated: Georgia O'Keeffe and Agent Pelton, Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce, by Karen Moss, p. 19, Article in Illumination, Orange County Museum of Art, 2009 Exhibition Catalog</ref> Sketches in her notebooks indicate that she was well versed with [[Annie Besant]] and [[Charles Webster Leadbeater|C.W. Leadbeater's]] [[Thought Forms (book)|''Thought Forms'']].<ref>"Agnes Pelton's Streams of Thought", Samantha Friedman, MoMA Magazine, March 20, 2024</ref> Some of the symbols from the book can be seen in her paintings, such as the symbol for jealousy.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGuDPVK1_YE Spiritual Searching in Modern Times: Agnes Pelton's Desert Transcendentalist], by Erika Doss. Posted on the Phoenix Art Museum YouTube channel on August 21, 2019.</ref> She was also influenced by the writings of [[Wassily Kandinsky]], ''Concerning the Spiritual in Art'' (1911). | ||
She had a close friendship with astrologist and theosophist [[Dane Rudhyar]]. In 1930, he introduced her to Agni Yoga which was founded by theosophists Helena and [[Nicholas Roerich]] in 1920. Several of her paintings | She had a close friendship with astrologist and theosophist [[Dane Rudhyar]]. He saw her work in New York and traveled to the wind mill to meet her. In 1930, he introduced her to Agni Yoga which was founded by theosophists Helena and [[Nicholas Roerich]] in 1920. Several of her paintings included fiery elements that were central to Agni Yoga and self-realization. Of these works, she stated, "These pictures are conceptions of light - the essence of fire, not as we see it in the material world, but as the radiance of the inner being."<ref>Artist Statement, Pelton Files, Jonson Gallery Archives, as cited by Tiska Blankenship in "Agnes Pelton and Florence Miller Pierce." Women Artists of the American West, ed. Susan R. Ressler, (Jefferson, NC, McFarland, 2003), 164.</ref> | ||
Dane Rudhyar, while living in New Mexico, introduced Pelton's work to modernist Southwest painter Raymond Jonson who was instrumental in forming the '''Transcendental Painting Group''' in New Mexico. Agnes Pelton, the oldest member of the group, was voted in as a member in absentia (and honorary president) even though she was living in Cathedral City, CA. Pelton and Jonson developed a friendship that lasted for the rest of her life. | |||
==Artistic Style== | ==Artistic Style== | ||
Pelton's style evolved over the years, but her work can be categorized in the three phases below: | |||
American Southwest landscapes and people - Influenced by her surroundings during her visit to Taos, NM in 1919, she started to paint desert landscapes and portraits of Native Americans using oils and pastels. | '''Early Imaginative Paintings''' - From 1911 to 1917, Pelton produced symbolist compositions based on dreams of ethereal figures and pastoral surroundings. She exhibited two of her “imaginative” paintings, ''Vine Wood'' and ''Stone Age'', in the groundbreaking 1913 Armory Show. | ||
Abstract Art - Beginning in 1926, she started to work on nature based abstractions. Her thoughts on life and spiritual issues were captured in notebooks which have been digitized at the Smithsonian. <ref> | '''American Southwest landscapes and people''' - Influenced by her surroundings during her visit to Taos, NM in 1919, she started to paint desert landscapes and portraits of Native Americans using oils and pastels. | ||
[[File:Sand-storm.jpg|right|200px|thumb|''Sand-storm'']] | |||
'''Abstract Art''' - Beginning in 1926, she started to work on nature based abstractions, inspired by light, water, and wind. Pelton used various symbols such as light, stars, and fire to illuminate the mystical and divine.<ref>Art and Life Illuminated: Georgia O'Keeffe and Agent Pelton, Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce, by Karen Moss, p. 23, Article in Illumination, Orange County Museum of Art, 2009 Exhibition Catalog</ref> Her thoughts on life and spiritual issues were captured in notebooks that she kept which have been digitized at the Smithsonian. <ref>See Agnes Pelton papers, 1885-1989. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.</ref> | |||
Although known by others in the art world in the 1920s and 1930s, she did not see economic success with her esoteric work. She continued to paint desert landscapes and portraits to sell commercially and abstract paintings as her personal calling.<ref>Art and Life Illuminated: Georgia O'Keeffe and Agent Pelton, Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce, by Karen Moss, p. 26, Article in Illumination, Orange County Museum of Art, 2009 Exhibition Catalog</ref> | |||
==Exhibitions and Museum Collections== | ==Exhibitions and Museum Collections== | ||
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Agnes Pelton: Poet of Nature - Palm Springs Museum of Art,1995 | Agnes Pelton: Poet of Nature - Palm Springs Museum of Art,1995 | ||
Illumination: The Paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin, and Florence Miller Pierce - Whitney Museum of American Art, | [https://ocma.art/exhibitions/illumination-the-paintings-of-georgia-okeeffe-agnes-pelton-agnes-martin-and-florence-miller-pierce/ Illumination: The Paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin, and Florence Miller Pierce] - Orange County Museum of Art, Karen Moss, Curator, May 3 to September 9, 2009 | ||
Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist Exhibit - [https://phxart.org/exhibition/agnes-pelton-desert-dranscendentalist/ Phoenix Art Museum], March 9 to September 8, 2019 (also traveled to [https://www.nmartmuseum.org/exhitions/agnes-pelton-desert-transcendentalist/ New Mexico Museum of Art], October 3, 2019 to January 5, 2020, [https://whitney.org/exhibitions/agnes-pelton Whitney Museum of American Art], March 13 to November 1, 2020, and [https://www.psmuseum.org/art/exhibitions/agnes-pelton-desert Palm Springs Art Museum], October 3, 2020 to September 5, 2021) | |||
[https://www.psmuseum.org/webapp/list/pelton-landscapes Agnes Pelton Landscapes] - Palm Springs Art Museum, Christine Giles, Senior Curator | |||
[https://artmuseum.unm.edu/exhibition/pelton-jonson/ Pelton and Jonson, The Transcendent 1930's], The University of New Mexico Art Museum, Mary Statzer, Curator, June 2023 - March 2025 | |||
Museum Paintings | |||
[https://crystalbridges.emuseum.com/objects/4011/sand-storm Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art], Bentonville, AR: ''Sand Storm'', 1932 and ''Divinity Lotus'', 1929 | |||
[https://collections.mfa.org/objects/524438 Museum of Fine Arts], Boston, MA: ''Prelude'', 1943 | |||
[https://www.sdmart.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/MM_Episode-78_Agnes-Pelton_April-2024_FINAL_Formatted.pdf The San Diego Museum of Art], California: ''The Primal Wing'', 1933 | |||
[https://www.moma.org/collection/works/447787 MoMA], New York: ''The Fountains'', 1926 | |||
Gallery | |||
<gallery> | |||
AP The Voice.png|Agnes Pelton, The Voice, 1930. Oil on canvas. Bequest of Raymond Jonson, Raymond Jonson Collection, The University of New Mexico Art Museum. | |||
AP Wells_of_Jade.png|Agnes Pelton, Wells of Jade, 1931. Oil on canvas. Bequest of Raymond Jonson, Raymond Jonson Collection, The University of New Mexico Art Museum. | |||
AP Ascent 1946.jpg|Agnes Pelton, Ascent (aka Liberation), 1946, Oil on canvas. | |||
AP Fire Sounds 1930.jpg|Agnes Pelton, Fire Sounds, 1930, Oil on canvas. | |||
Agnes Pelton | AP Vine Wood 1913.jpg|Agnes Pelton, Vine Wood, 1913, Oil on canvas. | ||
</gallery> | |||
==Additional Resources | ==Additional Resources == | ||
===Websites=== | |||
Agnes Pelton papers, 1885-1989. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution | [https://www.si.edu/object/agnes-pelton-papers-1885-1989%3AAAADCD_coll_208522 Agnes Pelton papers, 1885-1989]. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution | ||
National Association of Women Artists, https://thenawa.org/nawa-luminaries-agnes-lawrence-pelton/ | National Association of Women Artists, https://thenawa.org/nawa-luminaries-agnes-lawrence-pelton/ | ||
[https://www.wikiart.org/en/agnes-lawrence-pelton WikiArt.org] - Visual Art Encyclopedia, Agnes Lawrence Pelton | |||
===Videos=== | |||
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGuDPVK1_YE Spiritual Searching in Modern Times: Agnes Pelton's Desert Transcendentalist], by Erika Doss. Posted on the Phoenix Art Museum YouTube channel on August 21, 2019. | |||
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN6sBky8Si4 Transcendental LA: Agnes Pelton, Dane Rudhyar, and the New Age in LA] by Michael Carter. Posted on Philosophical Research Society n YouTube channel on December 13, 2022. | |||
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjRRFCwpOUw Curator Talk: Another World]. Posted on the Crocker Art Museum YouTube channel on Feb 17, 2023. | |||
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJGaXhKAck8 Salon D' Art: Agnes Pelton], Discussion group - Patricia Rockwood and Elizabeth Goodwill discuss Agnes Pelton and her work. Posted on Art Center Sarasota YouTube channel on June 23, 2020. | |||
===Articles=== | |||
[https://tfaoi.org/aa/9aa/9aa269.htm "Agnes Pelton: Poet of Nature"], article by Michael Zakian, ''Resource Library'', December 14, 2009 | |||
"Agnes Pelton: The Familiar Sublime", Lisa Beck, The Brooklyn Rail, June 5, 2018 | |||
"Rediscovering a Forgotten Woman Modernist Inspired by Nature's Unseen Forces", Allison C. Meier, Art & Object, September 24, 2019 | |||
==Notes== | ==Notes== | ||
<references/> | |||
[[Category:Artists|Pelton, Agnes]] | |||
[[Category:Nationality German|Pelton, Agnes]] | |||
[[Category:Nationality Naturalized American|Pelton, Agnes]] | |||
[[Category:People|Pelton, Agnes]] | |||
Latest revision as of 19:28, 15 January 2026
Agnes Lawrence Pelton was an American modernist painter known for her desert landscapes and visionary abstract compositions that communicated a personal spiritual interest.
Personal Life and Education
Agnes Pelton was born on August 22, 1881 in Stuttgart, Germany to American parents. After the death of her father, she moved with her mother to Brooklyn, NY in 1890. Her mother, Florence, operated the Pelton School of Music and home schooled Agnes who suffered from poor health as a child. [1]
Agnes first learned piano, and then added art classes at the Pratt Institute, graduating in 1900 at the age of 19. She continued to study landscape painting under instructor Arthur Wesley Dow, who later taught Georgia O’Keeffe. She also studied in Italy in 1910 under another Pratt instructor, Hamilton Easter Field, focusing on daily life drawing and Italian painters.
She set up a studio in Greenwich Village. In 1919, she visited Mabel Dodge Sterne (later Luhan), a patron of the arts, in Taos, NM and began to focus on portraits and landscape oil paintings. After the death of her mother in 1921, she moved to Long Island to be closer to nature and lived in a wind mill. It is here that she created her first abstract works, beginning in 1926. She traveled to Hawaii, New Hampshire, Beiruit, Syria, Georgia, and Pasadena. In 1931, she moved to Cathedral City in the California desert where she lived until her death in 1961.
Involvement with Theosophy
Though not a formal member of the Theosophical Society, she was influenced by the works of Helena Blavatsky and read The Key to Theosophy early on.[2] Sketches in her notebooks indicate that she was well versed with Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater's Thought Forms.[3] Some of the symbols from the book can be seen in her paintings, such as the symbol for jealousy.[4] She was also influenced by the writings of Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911).
She had a close friendship with astrologist and theosophist Dane Rudhyar. He saw her work in New York and traveled to the wind mill to meet her. In 1930, he introduced her to Agni Yoga which was founded by theosophists Helena and Nicholas Roerich in 1920. Several of her paintings included fiery elements that were central to Agni Yoga and self-realization. Of these works, she stated, "These pictures are conceptions of light - the essence of fire, not as we see it in the material world, but as the radiance of the inner being."[5]
Dane Rudhyar, while living in New Mexico, introduced Pelton's work to modernist Southwest painter Raymond Jonson who was instrumental in forming the Transcendental Painting Group in New Mexico. Agnes Pelton, the oldest member of the group, was voted in as a member in absentia (and honorary president) even though she was living in Cathedral City, CA. Pelton and Jonson developed a friendship that lasted for the rest of her life.
Artistic Style
Pelton's style evolved over the years, but her work can be categorized in the three phases below:
Early Imaginative Paintings - From 1911 to 1917, Pelton produced symbolist compositions based on dreams of ethereal figures and pastoral surroundings. She exhibited two of her “imaginative” paintings, Vine Wood and Stone Age, in the groundbreaking 1913 Armory Show.
American Southwest landscapes and people - Influenced by her surroundings during her visit to Taos, NM in 1919, she started to paint desert landscapes and portraits of Native Americans using oils and pastels.
Abstract Art - Beginning in 1926, she started to work on nature based abstractions, inspired by light, water, and wind. Pelton used various symbols such as light, stars, and fire to illuminate the mystical and divine.[6] Her thoughts on life and spiritual issues were captured in notebooks that she kept which have been digitized at the Smithsonian. [7]
Although known by others in the art world in the 1920s and 1930s, she did not see economic success with her esoteric work. She continued to paint desert landscapes and portraits to sell commercially and abstract paintings as her personal calling.[8]
Exhibitions and Museum Collections
Agnes Pelton: Poet of Nature - Palm Springs Museum of Art,1995
Illumination: The Paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin, and Florence Miller Pierce - Orange County Museum of Art, Karen Moss, Curator, May 3 to September 9, 2009
Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist Exhibit - Phoenix Art Museum, March 9 to September 8, 2019 (also traveled to New Mexico Museum of Art, October 3, 2019 to January 5, 2020, Whitney Museum of American Art, March 13 to November 1, 2020, and Palm Springs Art Museum, October 3, 2020 to September 5, 2021)
Agnes Pelton Landscapes - Palm Springs Art Museum, Christine Giles, Senior Curator
Pelton and Jonson, The Transcendent 1930's, The University of New Mexico Art Museum, Mary Statzer, Curator, June 2023 - March 2025
Museum Paintings
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR: Sand Storm, 1932 and Divinity Lotus, 1929
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA: Prelude, 1943
The San Diego Museum of Art, California: The Primal Wing, 1933
MoMA, New York: The Fountains, 1926
Gallery
-
Agnes Pelton, The Voice, 1930. Oil on canvas. Bequest of Raymond Jonson, Raymond Jonson Collection, The University of New Mexico Art Museum. -
Agnes Pelton, Wells of Jade, 1931. Oil on canvas. Bequest of Raymond Jonson, Raymond Jonson Collection, The University of New Mexico Art Museum. -
Agnes Pelton, Ascent (aka Liberation), 1946, Oil on canvas. -
Agnes Pelton, Fire Sounds, 1930, Oil on canvas. -
Agnes Pelton, Vine Wood, 1913, Oil on canvas.
Additional Resources
Websites
Agnes Pelton papers, 1885-1989. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
National Association of Women Artists, https://thenawa.org/nawa-luminaries-agnes-lawrence-pelton/
WikiArt.org - Visual Art Encyclopedia, Agnes Lawrence Pelton
Videos
Spiritual Searching in Modern Times: Agnes Pelton's Desert Transcendentalist, by Erika Doss. Posted on the Phoenix Art Museum YouTube channel on August 21, 2019.
Transcendental LA: Agnes Pelton, Dane Rudhyar, and the New Age in LA by Michael Carter. Posted on Philosophical Research Society n YouTube channel on December 13, 2022.
Curator Talk: Another World. Posted on the Crocker Art Museum YouTube channel on Feb 17, 2023.
Salon D' Art: Agnes Pelton, Discussion group - Patricia Rockwood and Elizabeth Goodwill discuss Agnes Pelton and her work. Posted on Art Center Sarasota YouTube channel on June 23, 2020.
Articles
"Agnes Pelton: Poet of Nature", article by Michael Zakian, Resource Library, December 14, 2009
"Agnes Pelton: The Familiar Sublime", Lisa Beck, The Brooklyn Rail, June 5, 2018
"Rediscovering a Forgotten Woman Modernist Inspired by Nature's Unseen Forces", Allison C. Meier, Art & Object, September 24, 2019
Notes
- ↑ Women Artists of the American West, Agnes Pelton and Florence Miller-Pierce, The Two Women in the Transcendental Painting Group, Biographies by Tiska Blankenship.
- ↑ Art and Life Illuminated: Georgia O'Keeffe and Agent Pelton, Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce, by Karen Moss, p. 19, Article in Illumination, Orange County Museum of Art, 2009 Exhibition Catalog
- ↑ "Agnes Pelton's Streams of Thought", Samantha Friedman, MoMA Magazine, March 20, 2024
- ↑ Spiritual Searching in Modern Times: Agnes Pelton's Desert Transcendentalist, by Erika Doss. Posted on the Phoenix Art Museum YouTube channel on August 21, 2019.
- ↑ Artist Statement, Pelton Files, Jonson Gallery Archives, as cited by Tiska Blankenship in "Agnes Pelton and Florence Miller Pierce." Women Artists of the American West, ed. Susan R. Ressler, (Jefferson, NC, McFarland, 2003), 164.
- ↑ Art and Life Illuminated: Georgia O'Keeffe and Agent Pelton, Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce, by Karen Moss, p. 23, Article in Illumination, Orange County Museum of Art, 2009 Exhibition Catalog
- ↑ See Agnes Pelton papers, 1885-1989. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
- ↑ Art and Life Illuminated: Georgia O'Keeffe and Agent Pelton, Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce, by Karen Moss, p. 26, Article in Illumination, Orange County Museum of Art, 2009 Exhibition Catalog
