BYRDCLIFFE
Say “Woodstock” and some people think of an acid-fueled music festival, while others picture a long-running art colony with some famous alumni. Fewer think of Byrdcliffe, a precursor artists’ colony established at Woodstock in 1902 by British ex-pat Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead and his American wife, Jane Byrd Mercer McCall. They bought 1,200 acres, constructed buildings and
created an artistic commune for craftsmen who, like Whitehead, were influenced by the back-to-nature theories of British Arts and Crafts notables John Ruskin and William Morris and their American apostle Arthur Wesley Dow. Underwritten by Whitehead’s considerable wealth, the group produced a variety of art and artifacts, and it was common for the artists to work in several mediums, including weaving, ceramics, furniture, prints, photography and painting. The furniture-making operation was short-lived, but Byrdcliffe remains a retreat for artists and thinkers. The Byrdcliffe group included Jessie Tarbox Beals, Bolton Brown, Dawson Dawson-Watson, Hermann Dudley Murphy, Birge Harrison and Zulma Steele, who later emerged as a pioneering American Modernist. A 2005 Steele exhibition at Spanierman Gallery in New York featured her intensely colored landscapes, and the exhibition catalog described her as “one of the first women artists to translate regional scenery into paint.” She is known for her monotypes (as well as ceramics and other decorative arts). As for Murphy, Colleene Fesko, vice president of Skinner Auctioneers in Bolton, Massachusetts, says, “His work is difficult to categorize, and I believe it to be undervalued. America’s Whistler—at one time tonal, Aesthetic and Boston—deserves many second looks.” In all, it’s a group to keep your eye on.

Roberta S. Maneker is an Art & Antiques New York correspondent.