This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Known as the "etcher of Indians," Elizabeth Boatright also spent many
years doing watercolor and oil landscapes of Texas and the Southwest
states of Arizona and New Mexico.
She was born and raised in
Houston and attended the Southern Seminary in Buena Vista, Virginia
(1915-17); the Art Institute of Chicago (1920-24); and the Art Students
League in New York (1924-25) where she came under the influence of
Joseph Pennell, master etcher. From 1925 until his death a year
later, she was his assistant.
Boatrright developed a keen
interest in Indian culture when she first went West in 1921. In
1927, as a student of Joseph Pennell she began aquatints and drypoint
etchings of Indians she observed in Arizona and New Mexico.
Then
she returned to Texas and was a teacher and later head of the Art
Department at Sul Ross State Teachers' College, Alpine, until
1932. She continued her visits to the Southwest, and in addition
to etchings of Indian subjects, she painted numerous watercolor
landscapes of the Big Bend Country of Texas.
In 1931, she
married folklorist Dr. Mody Boatright, and they lived in Austin where
he was a Professor of English at the University, and she continued her
painting career including the teaching of classes. In 1971, a
year after the death of her husband, she settled in Corpus Christi
until her death in 1989. In that area, she focused on marine
painting.
From the time of her marriage, she used her husband's
name on her work because painting at a time when it was difficult for
women artists to get recognition, she signed her paintings with her
surname of "Keefer", both without first initials as well as with the
full name Elizabeth Keefer Boatright.
She traveled widely in the
Southwest, where she visited and did etchings of the Indians. Thirty of
her etchings were exhibited in a one-woman show in the National Museum
in Washington D.C. in the early 1930s.
The artist died in Corpus Christi and was buried in Kerrville.
Sources include:
An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West by Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick
Texas Painters, Sculptors & Graphic Artists, John and Deborah Powers
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Elizabeth Boatright is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Taos Pre 1940
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