Biography from AskART:
| A painter working primarily in watercolor who showed early art talent, Margaret
Boroughs Adams made the expression of her talents secondary to taking
care of her husband, portrait painter Wayman Adams (1883-1959).
Of her it was written that she was his "most vocal cheerleader".
(128) However, in 1935, when their son, Snig, was about eleven
years old, she began a series of watercolor floral still lifes,
inspired by the family three-month visit to Taxco in southern Mexico,
and received attention for their excellence. However, she was so
insecure about asserting her skills that she signed her first
exhibition entries as 'Wayman's wife'.
Born in Austin, Texas, she had parents who encouraged her talents and
found good art teachers for her in Austin and New York City. In
Austin, she opened the Barn Studio, an art school. One of her
students was Miriam A. Ferguson, the first female governor of
Texas. In 1908, she was a founder of the Austin Art League and
also founded the Austin Heritage Society.
In 1910, Margaret went to Florence, Italy for the summer to study with
William Merritt Chase, and on that trip met her future husband, Wayman
Adams, who was also a student of Chase and was from Indiana. They
married eight years later, unable to afford marriage before that
time. They lived both in Indiana and New York City and had
several acres of land near Elizabethtown, New York in the
Adirondacks. There they established the Old Mill Art School for
summer classes, and Margaret ran a tea room whose building she oversaw
from wood from old barns. She decorated it with furnishings she
had bought in Mexico. George and Evelynne Mess gave lithography
classes at the school, and both Margaret and Wayman Adams did
lithography under their tutelage.
When their son was enrolled in Culver Military Academy, the couple
traveled together including a four-month trip to South America
where Wayman Adams completed a portrait of the president of Uruguay and
did a mural in Montevideo.
In 1950, the Adams moved back to her birthplace of Austin. He
died nine years later, and she remained there until her death in
1965. In later years, she described herself as content to be a
wife and mother and an artist of "lesser fame". (131)
However, the extensive exhibition record of Margaret Adams belies any
assertion that her artwork was less than recognized. In New York
City, she exhibited at Grand Central Art Galleries (1936-1937), New
York Decorators Club (1937), Allied Artists of America (1945), National
Association of Women Artists (1938), Harlow Keppel Galleries (1942-43)
and the American Watercolor Society (1945). Other
venues were the University of Texas, 1936; Southern States Art League,
1938; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1945; Hoosier Salon,
1945-47, 1950, 1955, and 1959; and the Texas Fine Arts Association,
1947.
Source:
Judith Vale Newton and Carol Ann Weiss, Skirting the Issue, pp. 128-131, 251
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