Metcalf, Augusta Isabella Corson (1881–1971)
Metcalf, Augusta Isabella Corson (1881–1971)
American artist of the West. Born in Kansas in 1881; died in Oklahoma in 1971.
Dubbed the "Sage Brush Artist," Augusta Metcalf moved with her family to Oklahoma's Indian Country in 1886 and for a half century painted scenes of the area near Durham, where she spent most of her life. Her first home in Oklahoma was a 10x12-foot shack, where she lived until 1892, when the family moved to a picket house on the Washita River. She started drawing horses when she was nine, using the sides of a white stone house near her own. Completely self-taught, she sent some of her first efforts to an uncle in San Francisco, who advised her to learn how to draw the horses' feet (instead of hiding them in the grass), and to use color only after she had mastered drawing. After practicing for a number of years, she felt expert enough to send an ad to the Sportsman's Review. Illustrated with a bucking horse, it announced: "I paint everything but portraits." Metcalf had a solo exhibition at the Oklahoma Art Center in 1949 and a showing at Grand Central Galleries in New York in 1958. She was elected to Oklahoma's Hall of Fame in 1968.
Barbara Morgan , Melrose, Massachusetts