This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Helen Brodt is best known for her landscapes of western scenes and pioneer portraits. She was born in Vermont, December 30, 1837, the daughter of Sally Wells and Tanner. Raised in New York, she attended the National Academy of Design. In 1861, she married Aurelius W. Brodt (b. NY in 1836 d. 1922) and followed him two years later to Red Bluff, California, where he was a schoolteacher and painter. They had three children.
While teaching and raising a family, she painted ranch scenes, missions, landscapes, and pioneer portraits in Red Bluff, Petaluma, Oakland, and Berkeley. Her "Carmel Mission" depicts the venerable building when no other structures around it were yet erected, as in her 1892 painting of the mission which has appeared on the back cover of a California History Quarterly Index.
Helen was also a teacher and had influence on other notable artists, among them Arthur Mathews, the painter, muralist, and craftsman. Mathews was born in Markesan, Wisconsin in 1860, but his family moved to Oakland when Arthur was six years old. He received his first art instruction in high school from Helen Tanner Brodt.
Helen was the first white woman to climb Mount Lassen, in 1864, and Lake Helen is named for her.
Source: "American Women Artists" by Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| | Born in Elmira, NY on April 21, 1838. Helen Tanner was raised in NYC and studied art at the NAD in 1854. After her marriage to Aurelius W. Brodt in New York, she followed her husband to California in 1863, settling in Red Bluff where her husband taught school. With an otherwise all-male party, in 1864 she climbed Mt Lassen, being the first white woman to do so. (Lake Helen is named for her there.) While busy raising a family, she painted scenes of missions and ranches, still lifes, portraits, landscapes, and china. A resident of various northern California communities, she taught art in the public schools of Pleasanton, Petaluma, Red Bluff, Berkeley, and Oakland. (Arthur Mathews received his first art instruction from her as a student of Oakland High School in 1867.) One of California's finest and earliest women artists, Mrs. Brodt died in Berkeley on March 10, 1908. Exh: New Orleans Expo, 1885 (1st prize for china); World's Columbian Expo (Chicago), 1893; Calif. Midwinter Int'l Expo, 1894. In: CSL; Bancroft Library (UC Berkeley); Stanford University; Society of Calif. Pioneers; Oakland Museum; Storer College (Harper's Ferry); CHS. | Source:
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
Interview with the artist or his/her family; Millie's Column, SF Chronicle, 2-24-1964; Women Artists of the American West; American Women Artists (Rubenstein); Woman Artist in the American West; Oakland Tribune, 3-12-1908 (obituary). | | Nearly 20,000 biographies can be found in Artists in California 1786-1940 by Edan Hughes and is available for sale ($150). For a full book description and order information please click here. |
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