Chrysler Museum's Susan Watkins show explores how women forged art careers

A new Chrysler Museum of Art exhibition reexamines American painter Susan Watkins, not as a forgotten turn-of-the-century prodigy, but as a Progressive Era strategist who actively engineered her rise in a male-dominated art world.

The show, “Susan Watkins and Women Artists of the Progressive Era,” opened October 17 and runs through January 11 at the museum in Norfolk, Virginia.

Watkins, born in San Francisco in 1875, moved with her family in 1890 to New York where she studied at the Art Students League. There, she was able to draw nude models and was taught by William Merritt Chase. After her father’s death in 1896, she moved with her mother to Paris, where she enrolled at the Académie Julian.

During her time in France, Watkins won major recognition, including a gold medal at the 1901 Paris Salon for her work The 1830 Girl, a portrait of an acquaintance wearing a costume of an earlier period in French history. The painting is a favorite of Mark Castro, the museum’s director of curatorial affairs, who spoke to Urgent Matter in a phone interview.

“It's beautifully painted. She's wearing this elaborate costume, and you can immediately pick out the textures of the fabrics and the softness of the feathers that are on hat,” Castro said. “But I love that this woman has such a completely serious expression, she’s not grouchy, she's not cranky, but she just has a slightly unamused look.”

In 1910, Watkins returned to San Francisco and settled in Virginia, where she married a Norfolk banker named Goldsborough Serpell, who helped establish what is now the Chrysler Museum.

But Watkins’ career was cut short when she died just over a year later at the age of 38, on the cusp of art world prominence. Art historians have speculated that Watkins could have reached the stardom of Mary Cassatt had she not died young.

Serpell, who kept Watkins’ work, may have saved Watkins’ legacy from falling to obscurity by keeping her work. When he died, he left the museum a trove of her paintings, written documents and photographs that have recently been reinterpreted by Corey Piper, who curated the show for the museum.

“We had received her papers along with a number of works in a bequest from her husband, and those have been around, and people had looked at them,” Castro said.

“I was really struck by the way in which [Piper] paid really close attention to her careful tracking of her own work, like who was exhibiting her work and what people were saying about her in the newspaper.”

Castro said that a researcher reviewing such documents in the past may have just viewed them as someone scrapbooking their clippings.

“In fact, what you're seeing is an artist who is working actively to promote herself, keeping track of where she's being mentioned, who is exhibiting her work, so that she can be effective and strategize how to promote herself, seek new commissions and place her paintings into exhibitions,” Castro said.

“This show really takes her from a kind of an almost passive position, like someone who's just affected by the currents in the art world at her time and put her into a more active position.”

In an essay, Piper makes a point that there were more Avant Garde movements and venues that some women artists were pursuing that she could have pursued, which resonated with Castro. He said Watkins may have realized that path would keep her from the mainstream commercial success that was seeking.

“She's really trying to adhere to these established institutions like showing at the Paris Salon, showing at leading mainstream venues in the United States, to ensure that her work is being seen by the people who are the most able economically and culturally to support her—either through commissioning works or placing her work in exhibitions,” Castro said.

“She's forging pieces of professional armor that will allow her to move out into the professional world and be seen as a serious artist.”

The exhibition includes about 75 works by Watkins and artists Lilla Cabot Perry, Minerva Chapman, Elizabeth Nourse and Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, among others.

When asked whether the fact the Chrysler Museum holds the bulk of her works made it a challenge to expand her reach outside of the institution’s circle, Castro acknowledged that having such deep holdings of artists can be limiting. But undergoing projects like the latest exhibit can highlight that there might be more work out there and findings to be made.

“We've been able to borrow Susan Watkins works from people who are the descendants of both her family and her husband's family and other institutions have come forward and identified a work here and there, all of which indicates there's probably more sitting in storage,” Castro said.

“I try to think of it as it kind of gives us having such a robust holding gives us more fuel to do this work and to kind of do our best to promote her legacy and get that work out there and in circulation.”

And, exploring Watkins’ career, for Castro, has become a prime example of how there are so many other women from art history just like her who fought to establish their careers in a male-dominated world and are now little-known and under-researched.

“That just inspires us that there's so much more work to do,” he said.

“It's hard, obviously, to know if Watkins had lived longer if she would have reached the kind of professional heights that she wanted to reach. I'd like to think so. I think that she could have been someone who, even if they were not a household name for the general public, was someone who would be known to people who are knowledgeable about American art.”