 Mary Monrad Ufer is primarily known as Mary Monrad (Ufer) Frederiksen
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Biography from AskART:
| Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Mary Frederiksen Ufer became a painter,
art
teacher and lecturer who lived in Chicago, Taos and New York
City. Like so many women artists of her era, who married artists,
she put her own talents on the 'back burner' to support her spouse,
Walter Ufer, who apparently did not encourage her painting. As a
result, only a few of her paintings are extant, and apparently she
never sold her work in a public venue. She did exhibit
occasionally at the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Academy of
Design, Pen and Brush Club in New York and the Museum of New
Mexico. She was also active with the National Association of
Women Painters and Sculptors
She studied art in
Paris, France at the Academie Julian where she was the pupil of Benjamin Constant, Jean Paul
Laurens, Luc Merson, and James Whistler.
In 1906, living in Chicago, she married Walter Ufer, who had just
joined
the advertising department of Armour & Co. The
couple had met the previous year at the J. Francis Smith Academy, a
Chicago division of the Academy Julian, where he was a teacher.
Ufer later described the circumstance: "Word went around the
Smith School that a girl just recently returned from Paris after
studying at the Academy de Julian and finally with Whistler in Paris
was painting in the day classes using the model with instruction.
Some one told her that if she wanted to meet a crank she should join
the Night Classes. She joined them." He went on to describe
her as looking "charming, even delicately beautiful . . . She was well
schooled and finely educated." (Porter 326)
However, their initial meeting seemed a portent of their future life
together. They had a big disagreement over her conservative
politics; he lost his temper, and they did not speak for nearly
four months. Subsequently reconciled and married, they lived in
Chicago for several years. Walter then went to Munich to study,
and she joined him for two years. In 1913, she went to Copenhagen
to live with her mother for a year while her husband returned to
Chicago to secure a home for them and establish himself
professionally. He had terrible frustrations, expressed much
anger, and their relationship suffered as he seemed "angry at
everybody." However, she continued to support him with many
suggestions for making money that did not involve a return to
illustration, and through her encouragement that he paint portraits of
prominent Chicagoans, he met Mayor Carter Harrison who, in turn,
arranged for Walter Ufer to paint in Taos.
Mary rejoined her husband in Chicago in 1914, and to bolster their
finances, she gave lectures at the Art Institute on Taos Artists,
something she continued to do for many years. In the future,
after they had settled in Taos, she traveled on the lecture circuit
including to Plainfield, New Jersey; Springfield, Illinois;
Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Albuquerque, New Mexico. In these
lectures, she mentioned other Taos artist wives who had forsaken their
talents for their husbands including Mrs. Ernest (Mary) Blumenschein
and Mrs. Eanger (Virginia) Couse. Herbert Sorenson,
representative from the State Department of Education, described the
lecture he heard Mary Ufer give as "one of the finest that I have heard
on the University campus." (Porter 328)
The Ufers settled in Taos where he became one of the founding artists
of that
colony and she also continued to paint. There they suffered much
financial and emotional strain due to Walter Ufer's alcoholism,
increasingly poor health, unpaid debts, and low market demand for his
painting. More and more she spent time away, returning to Chicago
and traveling to give lectures. Her husband was placed in a
sanitarium for alcoholism, and staying in Chicago to be away from him,
she oversaw his care.
Her life after his death on May 31, 1936, was very
difficult. A few months after her husband died, Mary Frederiksen Ufer went to work
as a WPA artist for $77.00 per month. However, she lost that
source of income because by January 1937, she had moved to New York
City where she became a resident of the Hotel Albert. This change
meant she could not be on the WPA payroll for New Mexico, and according
to a government official, Dorothy J. Ashton, she was also disqualified
from any participation because of her age: "It is necessary to remove
Mrs. Ufer from the project because she is over 65 years of age and
there is a rule from Washington which states that any person over 65 is
eligible for Old Age Assistance under the Social Security Act."
(Porter, 243)
Angry, bitter and exhausted by nursing her husband through his last
years and having inherited nothing from his estate, she was terribly
upset by her treatment in New Mexico of being deprived of any financial
relief. To Taos artist Emil Bisttram, who had communicated that
bad news to her, she wrote a note that she clarified as not being
personal against him but directed to the bureaucracy that was using him
as its voice: "I have for the 20 years I have lived in Taos served
Taos, New Mexico and the country with all the leisure and money I had
at my disposal, served without pay; and now when all I need is the slip
granting me relief status to be allowed to continue my work wherever I
happen to be, with no expense to Your state . . . you refuse me again.
You would have had a suicide on your hands, and the world should have
known why, if it was not that the mess Walter has left has to be put
into some kind of order, a debt to the world and the people in general
which as to be paid. The kind of living to which low level I have
been forced down is not worth struggling for." (Porter 243)
Eventually Mary Frederiksen Ufer secured work through the New York
WPA, and
continued living at the Hotel Albert until her death in 1947. She
also got some money from Social Security. In spite of the
unhappiness of her relationship with her husband, she continued to
promote his career including donations of work to the Speed Museum.
Sources:
Dean Porter; Teresa Hayes Ebie and Suzan Campbell, Taos Artists and Their Patrons, 1898-1950
Peggy and Harold Samuels, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West
Peter Hastings Falk, Editor, Who Was Who in American Art
Written by Lonnie Pierson Dunbier
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Mary Ufer is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Taos Pre 1940
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