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BYRDCLIFFE WINTER Zulma Steele studied at the Chicago Art Institute, the Boston Museum School, and the Pratt Institute where she met the influential teacher and theoretician Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow encouraged Steele and her colleague, Edna Walker, to join the Byrdcliffe colony where the two women designed floral decorations for furniture. She took painting classes with Birge Harrison who taught at Byrdcliffe and later at the Art Students’ League summer school in Woodstock. She was a member of the National Arts Club where she exhibited with such Modernist artists as Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Abraham Walkowitz, and Marguerite and William Zorach. In the early 1920s Steele went to France and studied with Cubist André Lhote. She married Neilson Parker in 1926 and until 1967 she worked in the studios of the large stone house they built near Woodstock. Steele is now the most revered of the Byrdcliffe designers. The painting and frame were found at White Pines, the Byrdcliffe home of Jane and Ralph Radcliffe-Whitehead who established the Arts and Crafts colony near Woodstock, New York in 1903. Zulma Steele and her friend Edna Walker came to Byrdcliffe shortly after the buildings were completed. While at the colony, the two women lived in the cottage depicted in this painting. They were active in several crafts, but today they are most known for the decorations they made for Byrdcliffe furniture. Hermann Dudley Murphy taught frame making at Byrdcliffe and the frame on this painting is typical of his style. Steele used the same frame on other paintings found at white Pines (Fig. 77, Byrdcliffe; An American Arts and Crafts Colony). Both frames have penciled notations indicating the desired finish—in this instance: “Kemp Green 9” and “Roman 9 Tone”--but it is impossible to know if these frames were made at Byrdcliffe. Steele made many paintings featuring the Catskill landscape. She also made monotypes to record her trip to the Caribbean and made several images of White Pines.
HEPATICA This delicate painting of hepatica is one of many nature studies made while Steele was at Byrdcliffe. The signature on H”Hepatica” my be unique; Steele usually put a “Z” in one of the rectangles in the upper right of the image and a “S” in the oyher rectangle. Her studies of iris, maple leaves, poppies, and hollyhocks among other plants were adapted for decorations on furniture produced at Byrdcliffe from 1903 until 1905. No cabinet with a hepatica design was found among the furniture at White Pines, the home of Ralph and Jane Whitehead who founded the Byrdcliffe Colony. Zulma Steele studied at the Chicago Art Institute, the Boston Museum School, and the Pratt Institute where she met the influential teacher and theoretician Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow encouraged Steele and her colleague, Edna Walker, to join the Byrdcliffe colony where the two women designed floral decorations for furniture. She took painting classes with Birge Harrison who taught at Byrdcliffe and later at the Art Students’ League summer school in Woodstock. She was a member of the National Arts Club where she exhibited with such Modernist artists as Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Abraham Walkowitz, and Marguerite and William Zorach. In the early 1920s Steele went to France and studied with Cubist André Lhote. She married Neilson Parker in 1926 and until 1967 she worked in the studios of the large stone house they built near Woodstock. Steele is now the most revered of the Byrdcliffe designers.
ZULMA STEELE PRINT, WHITE PINES, BYRDCLIFFE White Pines was the Byrdcliffe home of Jane and Ralph Radcliffe-Whitehead, who founded the Arts and Crafts colony near Woodstock, New York in 1903. Zulma Steele and her friend Edna Walker came to Byrdcliffe shortly after the buildings were completed. While at the colony, the two women were active in several crafts, but today they are most known for the decorations they made for Byrdcliffe furniture. Steele was also a successful fine artist who made many paintings featuring the Catskill landscape. She made monotypes to record her trip to the Caribbean and made several prints of White Pines using an image of the Whitehead home taken verbatim from a photograph. The print is presently framed in a period oak frame.
This delicate painting of a branch from a maple tree is one of many nature studies made while Steele was at Byrdcliffe. Her studies of iris, maple leaves, poppies, and hollyhocks among other plants were adapted for decorations on furniture produced at Byrdcliffe from 1903 until 1905. Cabinets with Steele’s maple leaf designs were found at White Pines, the home of Ralph and Jane Whitehead who founded the Byrdcliffe Colony. Zulma Steele studied at the Chicago Art Institute, the Boston Museum School, and the Pratt Institute where she met the influential teacher and theoretician Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow encouraged Steele and her colleague, Edna Walker, to join the Byrdcliffe colony where the two women designed floral decorations for furniture. She took painting classes with Birge Harrison who taught at Byrdcliffe and later at the Art Students’ League summer school in Woodstock. She was a member of the National Arts Club where she exhibited with such Modernist artists as Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Abraham Walkowitz, and Marguerite and William Zorach. In the early 1920s Steele went to France and studied with Cubist André Lhote. She married Neilson Parker in 1926 and until 1967 she worked in the studios of the large stone house they built near Woodstock. Steele is now the most revered of the Byrdcliffe designers.
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