Copyright © 2019 by Wendy Waszut-Barrett
In 1914, Thomas G. Moses wrote, “Early in April a number of Palette and Chisel Club boys, including myself, went to Fox Lake to look for a new site. We didn’t find anything worthwhile, so we will remain where we are for another season… I am not very regular at Fox Lake this year and I miss sketching. I also miss my rocks and running brooks. I have to go some distance for that kind of a motive… Miss Maude Oliver, Art Critic of the Herald, wanted to see the animals fed and housed, so she went to Fox Lake to the camp. She requested that we all act perfectly natural and not put on any frills and do nothing out of the ordinary to entertain her. I never saw a bunch act worse. It was awful. I think she got plenty of local color and artistic atmosphere for her article in the Sunday Herald the next week – convinced me that she had drunk a glass full of camp life.”
The Palette & Chisel club made the news on multiple fronts during 1914. In January, John B. Woodruff was elected the Club’s new president (Inter Ocean, 9 Jan. 1914, page 3). In March, Club members and Sosman & Landis artist, Victor Higgins, received the gold medal in the annual exhibit. Higgins had recently returned from studying abroad in Paris (Chicago Tribune, 27 March 914, page 10). In July, the son of a past Club president, poster artist Walter Colonel Foerster, eloped with well-known heiress Marietta Hawthorne (Oakland Tribune, 3 July 1914, page 5). Club members were active and in the news across the country.
Of the art critic at Fox Lake, Moses was referring to Maude Isabella G. Oliver. Oliver was an artist, art critic and author. Born on May 10, 1872, in Rock Island, Illinois, she was the daughter of commercial salesman Garrett H. Oliver and teacher Katie A. Spear. The couple was married a few months after Maude’s birth, tying the knot on August 8, 1872. The newly married couple and their new born lived with their extended family in the beginning. But the marriage did not last and the couple soon divorced, with Garrett remarrying and starting a second family. Until the age of 9 years old, Maude enjoyed the comfort of mother’s family in Davenport, Iowa. Mother and daughter moved to Chicago where the two would continue to live together until her mother’s passing in 1922.
Oliver worked as an art critic for the “Chicago Herald” and as an editor of the “Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago.” She resigned from the Art Institute’s publication in 1918 to enter war work and later became a correspondent for the “Studio,” of London. She was also a member of the Illinois Women’s Press Association, even becoming the treasurer of the organization.
Oliver both illustrated and wrote books. Her “First Steps in the Enjoyment of Pictures” was a publication utilized for children’s art instruction in schools across the country. It was published by Henry Holy and Company in 1920, here is a link to the book: http://emilcarlsen.org/portfolio/first-steps-in-the-enjoyment-of-pictures-by-maude-i-g-oliver-h-holt-and-company-new-york-ny-1920-page-65-131-illustrated-bw-on-page-131/ Oliver was also a dress designer and did portrait work as a silhouette cutter. It was her silhouette work that appeared in her illustrations for Lily Lee Dootson’s “Which Am I?” book.
Oliver remained single her entire life, passing away in a nursing home on February 17, 1958. She was survived only by two cousins Thilo G. Knappe of Davenport and Mrs. Eunice Eddy Rickman of Homewood, Illinois (Quad City Times, 19 Feb. 1958, page 5).
To be continued…
