Celebrating Women Artists in Payne Gallery's Collection

Payne Gallery holds work by the modernist Georgia O'Keeffe and her contemporary, the photographer (& Moravian alumna) Gertrude Käsebier; as well as the celebrated Elizabeth Catlett, Cecilia Beaux, Malvina Hoffman, Fern Coppedge, among others. 

Born Gertrude Stanton in Iowa, her family traveled west on a wagon train when Gertrude was but a girl. The experience sparked her life-long interest in Native Americans. When the Stantons moved back East, sixteen-year-old Gertrude attended The Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies in Bethlehem (precursor to Moravian University).

Alfred Stieglitz launched Käsebier's career. Stieglitz devoted the first issue of Camera Work (1903), the influential journal of the Photo-Secessionists, to her.

Portrait (Miss N.), 1903, opens the inaugural volume of Camera Work. Stieglitz published six photogravures by Käsebier in the first issue, which was more work than by any other photographer who appeared in the issue. (Those others included Stieglitz himself, Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Joseph Keiley, Frederick Evans, and Clarence White.)

The anonymous Miss N. who posed for Käsebier is Evelyn Nesbit, one of illustrator Charles Dana Gibson's "Gibson Girls."

Born in Philadelphia, Beaux is among America's foremost portraitists. Overcoming many barriers towards women's achievements in the arts, she rose to the top of her profession.

When Portrait of Robert Arthur, 1885, was painted, Beaux was "receiving commissions from notable Philadelphians and earning $500 per portrait, comparable to what Eakins commanded" according to her biographer Alice A. Carter.

Born in Illinois, Coppedge spent much of her life in Pennsylvania. Known for scenes of Bucks County, she was part of both the New Hope School and The Philadelphia Ten, a group of women artists who exhibited together from 1917 to 1945. Other women of The Ten in the collection include Cora Smalley Brooks, Mary Smyth Perkins, and Mary Elizabeth Price.

Georgia O'Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887, in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Known for her large flowers and bold landscapes on canvas, this delicate watercolor is on Japanese rice paper. 

In January 1916, a friend of O'Keeffe brought a group of her abstract drawings to photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Later that year, without O'Keeffe’s knowledge, he exhibited her drawings at his New York gallery. When she found out, she demanded they be taken down. Stieglitz refused. The exhibition launched her career.

Born in Washington DC, American-Mexican artist Elizabeth Catlett is best known for her depictions in sculpture and in graphic art of the lived Black-American experience. In 1946 she traveled to Mexico City, where she worked for twenty years.

Three Women of America by Elizabeth Catlett is an image of women of different ethnicities—white, black, and brown—intertwined. Each face shares an eye with the next; each arm and hand overlay another's; and each figure wears different bold colors and patterns that distinguish their differences and blend their similarities.