"An island of their own"
AAN honors the "First Ladies of Nantucket Art"
By Marli Guzzetta
There were the Quakers, the whalers and then the painters - and of that last demographic, which recreated Nantucket as an arts colony, a substantial number were women. That is the community that the Artists Association is commemorating in its newest exhibit, "An Island of Their Own - The First Ladies of Nantucket Art," a retrospective covering artists and their works from 1910- 1960.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent Artists' Association of Nantucket Gallery Director Bobby Frazier hangs Gadys Milligan's portrait of ivory carver Aletha Macy next to Katherine Dunne Pagon's "Margaretta," a portrait of illustrator Margaretta Hinchman. Dunn Pagon was a member of the 45 Group and also an AAN founder.

"There was a time when the attraction of Nantucket to tourists and second home buyers was based on our whaling history and the surviving, quaint architecture that came from that era. But now, there's an attraction that's based on our being an artists' colony, and I think that stands head to toe-totoe with our whaling history," said AAN Gallery Director Bobby Frazier. "The history of Nantucket's art colony is unique in comparison to that of places like Woodstock or Provincetown, because women were the driving force. ... two-thirds of the artists here through the '20s, '30s and '40s were women; and the ones who really took the bull by the horns became the founders and organizers of things like the Artists' Association and the Sidewalk Arts Sale."

Barbara Melendy's "Milk Street," Watercolor, 1956

"The art scene as we now experience it on Nantucket would have been impossible without the women," said Nantucket Arts Council President Reggie Levine, who knew a great many of these women in their time on island.

Many of these women lived in shacks on South Wharf and studied under Frank Swift Chase. Some of them inherited family property and decamped here. Pictures show a great deal of them painting on in the fields, or on the side of the street - often, and sometimes oddly, in skirts. Elizabeth Saltonstall, Florence Lang, Anne Congdon, Ruth Haviland Sutton, Maud Stumm - these are just some of the old guard whose art will help the AAN celebrate Women's History Month this March.

The exhibit will feature roughly 80 pieces, borrowing a few from private collections. Just about every piece in the collection is significant, not only for its quality but also for what it represents in terms of what was happening on the island at the time of its creation.

Elizabeth Saltonstall: Nantucket arts colony pioneer.

Elizabeth Saltonstall's "Arabesque," for example - merged with its imagery of driftwood amongst an abstract, glowing background - the traditional and non-traditional styles of island painting at the time. "It's kind of like she's straddling both worlds," Frazier said.

Also included in this exhibit is the highly recognizable portrait of Florence Lang done by Elinor Barnard. (The exhibit includes a section of portraits the island's women artists made of one another.) Lang provided reasonably priced housing for many female artists via her cottage rentals, and also converted an old candle factory into The Candle House for exhibitions before opening the Easy Street Gallery in 1924.

Of all the artists represented in the show, only Barbara Melendy is still alive, according to Frazier. Her piece, entitled "Milk Street" depicts in sunny watercolors the timeless charm of Milk Street during a Nantucket summer. She painted the scene, because it was familiar to her - her family purchased a house on that street in 1923.

Melendy, who received a degree from the Yale University School of Art before the general college admitted women, remembers some of the women in the show; she called Sidewalk Art Show founder Emily Hoffmeier a "reserved, but nice" person, and credited Elizabeth Saltonstall (whose family was high Nantucket society) with never trying to live off the laurels of her last name. "She was very competent and very good at what she did, and straight to it. There were no airs put on by her at all," Melendy remembered.

This is possibly the most comprehensive exhibit ever assembled on the important history of Nantucket's female artists, whose influence extends even to today, according to Bobby Frazier.

"There's no doubt that the levels of male and female artists have changed," Frazier said. "But there's no doubt about it. Of those artists who live here year-round, there's still a strong core of lady

artists." I