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Ad Code: 3
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An example of work by Helen Henderson Chain
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Of the 19th-century frontier Western artists, Helen Chain was
Colorado's most prominent female painter. She was known for her
depictions of the Rocky Mountains, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon,
Southwest pueblos, marine views, mining camps, and animals. She
was also an illustrator of Snow-Shoe Itinerant by John Dyer, published 1891.
Chain
was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and lived there for several years,
and then in the early 1850s moved to California. Her mother died
in 1862, and Chain went back to Indianapolis to live with her aunt,
Helen Howland. She received her formal training in Indianapolis
at the Methodist College and graduated from Illinois Female College
(now MacMurray College) in Jacksonville, Indiana.
In 1871, she
married James Albert Chain, and settled in Denver with her husband, who
was a partner in the Chain and Hardy book Store in downtown Denver, an
exhibition venue for local artists. She became a promoter of
local artists by holding exhibitions and classes in her studio which
she opened in 1877. She was one of the founders of the Le Brun
Art Club, which helped bring art consciousness to the city and led to
the founding of the Artists' Club of Denver two years later.
Popular as an art teacher, she often climbed mountains, including
Pike's Peak, with her students in search of subjects.
In 1892,
Chain participated in the first exhibition of the Denver Art
League. She also traveled and studied in Europe, spent a winter
in New York City painting with George Inness, and studied with Hamilton
Hamilton in 1873.
She was the first woman to paint the Mount
of the Holy Cross on site, and traveled extensively in the Southwest
and California painting pueblos scenes, animals, and marine scenes as
well as landscapes. She became the first artist to exhibit New
Mexico Pueblo scenes at the National Academy of Design in New York
where in 1882, she showed Pueblo de Taos and Morning in the Pueblo Indian Village. More than likely, she was the first woman to sketch the Grand Canyon of Arizona on location, which she did in 1883.
An
inveterate traveler, she was nicknamed "Trot" by her friends, and this
pursuit caused her death. She and her husband were on a two-year
trip around the world and were drowned in the China Sea in 1892 by a
typhoon.
Source:
Phil and Marian Yoshiki Kovinick, Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West |
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
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Helen Chain is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Taos Pre 1940
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