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Victoria Hutson Huntley

Artist: Victoria Hutson Huntley, (1900-1971)
Year: 1964
Title: "Ancient Place"
Medium: lithograph
Dimensions: image: 9 ¾ x 13 ¾ in. paper: 13 x 17 ¾ in.
Hand Signed in Pencil: signature & date-lwr. Rt.
Edition Size: 50
Paper: cream wove
Condition: very good
Publisher: George Miller
Retail Price: $500.00

Victoria Hutson Huntley  (1900-1971)

Lithographer, painter, muralist and art educator Victoria Hutson Huntley was born Victoria Ebbels in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, in October 1900. Her family moved to New York City while she still was a baby, and she lived there until 1921. Later, her life and work took her to Texas, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey.

From the age of twelve through high school, Victoria attended Saturday classes at the Art Students League. After a year on scholarship at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art, she entered the League's regular classes in 1919. She studied there with several teachers who were noted artists: John Sloan, George Luks, George Bridgman and Max Weber. While she was not satisfied in general with her study at the League, she appreciated Weber's teaching and Luks' advice that she had the potential to be a mural painter.

With the death of her father at the end of her second year at the League, she entered Teachers College, then moved to Denton, Texas, where she was an Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the College of Industrial Arts from 1921 - 1923. She discovered that teaching was a rewarding experience and the real beginning of her own education. As in her childhood, she continued to be somewhat aloof and intensely interested in reading and music.

Victoria married William K. Hutson in 1925. Her only child, Hazel, was born in 1926. In 1930, she had her first one-man show of paintings and drawings in black and white at the Weyhe Gallery in New York. The gallery's Director, Carl Zigrosser, encouraged her to take up the medium of lithography and remained a lifelong friend and mentor.

Her venture into the new medium of lithography under the instruction of George Miller from 1930 to 1948 was highly successful and she became well established as an award-winning lithographer. Her lithographs feature a broad variety of subjects: rural scenes such as children ice skating, barns and horses; landscapes; still lifes; industrial and urban scenes; architectural studies; the human figure; and floral and bird studies. Her work shows imagination, intensity, simplicity, technical skill, and formal beauty in its composition.

In 1930, her lithograph "Interior," won the Logan prize for lithography in the Art Institute of Chicago international print exhibition. Her lithographs were acquired by such museums as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Victoria gives a detailed account of the process of making a lithograph as well as some of the history of the medium in her article, "On Making a Lithograph," in the May 1960 issue of American Art. The print that is used as an example in the article is "Peck's Barn," which is owned by the St. Charles Public Library.

In the last paragraph of the article, she writes, "Though many moving and magnificent lithographs have been created since Senefelder's discovery and many fine artists are working in the medium today, I feel that the full potential has not been realized. Its future lies in the hands of the artists of today and tomorrow who, through their industry and experimentation, may add another dimension to this, the most sensitive and responsive medium in the whole realm of original printmaking."

She became a member of the American Artists Group, which was composed of thirty-eight leading American artists representative of different schools. They included Peggy Bacon, John Steuart Curry, Mabel Dwight, Wanda Gag, Rockwell Kent, Kenneth Hayes Miller, Jose Clemente Orozco, and Diego Rivera. Their hope was to represent the best in contemporary American art. In their 1935 Handbook Number One, the Group stated its purpose: "... to popularize American art by making it better known to the American public. One way, and a practical way, to accomplish this purpose, is, to distribute as widely as possible first class reproductions of worthy originals." Reproductions were available first as greeting cards, including Christmas cards. Victoria's "Christmas Night," was one of these. Four other of her lithographs were represented in the American Artists Group: "Winter Landscape," "Skaters," "Colonial Interior," and "Lower New York."

In 1934 Victoria married Ralph Huntley and assumed his name professionally. They moved to West Cornwall, Connecticut, in 1936. There, she began drawing people again and was able to pursue her interest in art education. From 1934 to 1942 she taught painting and drawing at the Birch-Wathen School in New York City. From 1939 to 1941, she was resident artist at the Redding Ridge (Connecticut) School. From 1942 to 1946 she was resident artist and teacher of art at the Pomfret School (Connecticut).

Victoria's interest in mural painting continued. Her entry in a Treasury Department national competition in 1937 won her a commission to paint a mural for the Springfield, New York, Post Office. She completed the mural, "Fiddler's Green," in 1938. The following year, she completed another mural, "The Packet Sails from Greenwich," in the Greenwich, Connecticut, Post Office. In 1940 she was elected as an Associate Member of the National Academy, New York City.

From 1946 to 1953, the Huntleys resided in Fern Park, Florida. Victoria taught in the Art Department of Rollins College in Winter Park. The focus of her print work during this period was the bird life of the Everglades.

Her work continued to win recognition and acclaim. In 1947, she received a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters and used the stipend to finance a trip to study the Everglades. In 1948, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative work in lithography. This was an intensely active year for her. She produced seven canvases, two hundred wash and pastel paintings, and twenty-five lithographs. The following year, she had an important show at the Kennedy Gallery.

In 1955, she, her husband Ralph, and her daughter Hazel moved from Florida to Geneva, Illinois. Ralph, a research physicist, was Director of the Riverbanks Acoustical Laboratories. The family resided in the old Fabyan residence in front of the laboratory. While in Geneva, she was active in the community. She taught art and her work was represented locally through the Studio Gallery. However, she maintained her professional contacts throughout the country, exhibited nationally, and her work continued to win attention and awards. While living in Geneva, she did studies of Chicago steel plants. One of these, her "Towers of Industry," a lithograph of the United States Steel Carnegie plant on 95th Street in Chicago, was her first print of a Chicago area subject to be exhibited. It was shown at the annual exhibition of the Society of American Graphic Artists at the Architectural League in New York City in 1956.

According to Edward Spellman in a 1956 Chicago Daily Tribune article, Victoria liked to do everything and did not specialize in subject matter or media. He reported that she preferred landscapes, industrial scenes and portraits, and produced ten lithographs a year, spending the rest of her time on portraits and landscapes. The Huntleys moved from Geneva to Chatham, N.J. in 1963. Victoria died in Chatham on July 3, 1971.

Sources:

•Handbook of the American Artists Group, Number One. New York: American Artists Group, 1935. • Huntley, Victoria Hutson. "On Making a Lithograph." American Artist (May, 1960), 30-74. • Kraeft, June and Norman. Great American Prints, 1900-1950: 138 lithographs, etchings, and woodcuts. New York: Dover Publications, 1984. • Original Etchings, Lithographs and Woodcuts Published by the American Artists Group, Inc. New York: American Artists Group, 1937. • Spellman, Edward. "Geneva Lithographer Finds Subjects in Steel Industry." Chicago Daily Tribune (May 17, 1956), Part 8, Page 1 W. • Whiting, F. A., Jr. "Victoria Hutson Huntley." Magazine of Art (November, 1938). • Who Was Who in American Art. Edited by Peter Hastings Falk. Madison, Conn: Sound View Press, 1985.

Prizes - Lithography "Interior" Logan Prize for Lithography, International Graphic Art Exhibition, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1930 "Koppers Coke" Mary Collins Prize for Lithography, National Exhibition of Graphic Art, The Philadelphia Print Club, 1933 "North Country" Third Purchase Prize, Library of Congress, 1945 "Dawn Came" Daumier Prize of $1,000 for the Best American Lithograph of 1946, Associated American Artists, N.Y.C. "Tropical Storm" University of Florida Purchase Prize, Florida Federation of Art, Tampa, 1948 "Evening, the Everglades" First Prize in Lithography, 7th Annual Exhibition of Prints, Library of Congress, 1949 "Dusk" American Artists Group Prize for Lithography, Society of American Graphic Artists, N.Y.C., 1950 "Sawgrass Country, the Everglades" Purchase Prize, Art Students League 75th Diamond Jubilee Exhibition, N.Y.C., 1951 "Wild Birds" Color Lithograph, First Honorable Mention, Annual Exhibition of Audubon Artists, N.Y.C.,

1953 "Old Wall" The Cannon Prize of $200 in the 137th Annual Exhibition of the National Academy of Design, N.Y.C.

 

Prize - Oil Painting "Old Wall, Mexico" Resin-oil painting. Municipal Art League Prize in the 64th Annual Exhibition by the Artists of Chicago and Vicinity, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1961

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