Agnes Pelton, Nurture

Written by NEHMA's Visitor Services staff member Shelby York

November 6, 2015

Agnes Pelton, who was widely acclaimed during her lifetime, is not as acknowledged today despite the inclusion of her work in numerous group and solo exhibits such as the McBeth and Knoedler galleries in New York and solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the San Diego Museum of Art. [1] Born in Germany in 1881 to American parents William Halsey Pelton and Florence Tilton, Pelton accompanied her mother on her travels, enabling her to explore Europe’s diverse culture and art as a child. The family lived in Switzerland for a time before Pelton and her mother moved to Brooklyn, New York on a doctor’s suggestion that the milder climate would cure Pelton’s bronchitis. [2] Her father did not accompany them and died in Germany when Pelton was ten. Thereafter her mother supported them by opening the Pelton School of Music in Brooklyn where she taught piano lessons.

In 1895, at the age of fourteen, Pelton enrolled in Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute where she studied under Arthur Wesley Dow, who also taught Georgia O’Keefe. Dow discouraged his students from imitating reality, instead having them use opposites, dynamics, and abstract relationships to create art. Pelton graduated in 1900 and became Dow’s assistant in Ipswich, Massachusetts. In 1907 Pelton focused her studies on the effects of outdoor light on female forms, which produced mesmerizing figures, “bathed in atmospheric light”. The paintings that stemmed from these studies were included in the Armory Show in New York in 1913.

Pelton studied in Italy in 1910 during which time she read Walter Pater’s book “The Renaissance” which “emphasized the importance of tuning into energy and natural phenomena”. [2] From this book Pelton tapped “into her natural introspective state” and “validated her desire to respond to the subtleties of atmosphere and light” [2].

Pelton was inspired by the spirituality of nature and how light interacts with objects. Pelton's first abstracted works were based on natural elements and captured the interest of Raymond Johnson, founder of the Transcendental Painting Group based in New Mexico. The group believed that nature was inherently beautiful and positive, a point Pelton personally tried to make apparent in her paintings out of a desire to “make visible the positive force she felt was present in the universe”[1]. Pelton’s paintings, such as “Nurture”, are characterized by undulating forms along with bright colors and luminescence created by layers of paint. Pelton, who gained inspiration for Eastern philosophies, imagined her paintings while in a meditative state, and often wrote poetry to help convey her emotions and ideas.

Sources:
1. Michael Zakian, Agnes Pelton: Poet of Nature http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/9aa/9aa269.htm
2. jlwcollection.com/jlwcollection.com/Agnes_Pelton.html