ANNA E. KEENERS O U T H W E S T E R N R E G I O N A L I S T

ANNA E. KEENERS O U T H W E S T E R N R E G I O N A L I S T

PANHANDLE-PLAINS HISTORICAL MUSEUMCanyon, Texas

September 13, 2014 – February 15, 2015

Curated by Michael R. Grauer

Introduction by Michael R. Grauer

Essay by Scott Higginbotham

FRONT COVER: Chamisa and Asters No. 107, n.d., Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inchesINSIDE FRONT COVER: Zion, 1969, Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches

INSIDE BACK COVER: Street Scene, 1963, Monoprint, 13 x 10 inchesBACK COVER: A Pilgrimage, 1963, Acrylic polymer on Masonite, 40 x 32 inches

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PLATE 1Untitled [Landscape], circa 1920

Oil on canvasboard, 7 x 10 inches

PLATE 2Winter in Bonita Canyon, 1959Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches

ANNA KEENERSouthwestern Regionalist

Women have been vital to art making in Texas and New Mexicofor thousands of years. Female potters, weavers, basketmakers

and painters have inhabited these regions and left their creative evidences for the world to see. The fine arts took a leap forwardwhen German sculptor Elisabet Ney settled near Hempstead, Texas,in the 1870s. While scholars have plumbed at length the contributionsof male artists to Southwestern art – save the perpetual obsession with the life and art of Georgia O’Keeffe – the works of womenartists remain largely under-researched and under-exhibited. This israther ironic as, in fact, in myriad approaches, women artists tookfar more risks than their male counterparts. Experimentation became the standard for women artists in Texas and New Mexicoas they elbowed their way to the table dominated by their malepeers. Sadly, many of them were taken far more seriously in theirown generation than they are in our own so-called “enlightened”time today. Hopefully this exhibition will allow us to examine thecontributions of one of these artists, Anna Keener, on the merit,depth and breadth of her work and decide for ourselves her placein American art.

ARTIST AND EDUCATOR Anna Elizabeth Keener (1895-1982) was born in Flagler, Colorado.Raised in Dalhart, Texas, she befriended fellow painters Lloyd LhronAlbright (1896-1950) and Regina Tatum Cooke (1902-1988). Albright painted at Taos every chance he could and Cooke becamethe Taos News arts editor. Both Albright and Cooke likely encouragedKeener to paint in New Mexico, although evidence of her work inTaos is limited.

Keener studied with Birger Sandzen at Bethany College in Linsborg,Kansas, achieving B.F.A. and B.A. degrees there in 1916 and 1918,

“We know that women artists have worked in what would come tobe called the American West as long as humans have inhabited theterrain… Between 1890 and 1945 women artist of all kinds workedin the West in great numbers, creating objects so abundant anddiverse as to defy facile generalization.”

Virginia Scharff“Women Envision the West, 1890-1945,”

Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945.1

PLATE 3A Northern New Mexico Home, 1965

Oil on gessoed Masonite, 23 x 31 inches

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PLATE 4Madonna Forest Fantasy #2, circa 1964

Acrylic on Masonite, 36 x 28 inches

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respectively. Sandzen painted in Colorado, New Mexico, and, ofcourse, Kansas, and became an associate of the Taos Society of Artistsin 1922. He became well-known for his heavy impasto and Fauve-like palette. Keener applied the dynamic brushwork and vivid colorslearned from Sandzen to landscapes in Colorado, New Mexico andTexas, and occasionally painted genre scenes.

Keener also enlisted in the United States Navy during World WarI. Due to a shortage of clerical help during this time, the Naval Reserve Act allowed women to enlist. By the Armistice in 1918,over eleven thousand women had signed up as Yeomen (F) or“Yeomenettes.”2 In her own typewritten resume, Keener listed herservice as a “Yeowoman.” She was stationed at Detroit, Michigan,and not discharged until October 1919. While serving in Detroit,she took night classes at the Detroit School of Design. Keener isburied at Santa Fe National Cemetery due to her U.S. Navy service.

In 1920, female artists making a living strictly in the studio werefew and far between. Avenues for an art career in the United Stateswere largely limited to teaching art and/or commercial art. ThusKeener began her art teaching career at Globe, Arizona, publicschools in 1920. While there and under the wings of fellow teachers,she made numerous trips to the surrounding Apache reservations.In addition to Arizona, Keener would eventually teach in publicschools in Kansas, New Mexico and Texas. Allegedly she gave oneof her paintings to each graduating senior at Dalhart High Schoolwhen she taught there.

Like many female art teachers at this time, Keener supplementedher art education during summer breaks and any time she could atreputable art schools and art colonies and with private instructors.Consequently, she also studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, theArt Institute of Chicago and Colorado State Teacher’s College, andwith private instructors in Mexico City. She learned lithographyfrom the master of this medium in Taos, Joseph Imhof. Keener received her master of arts from the University of New Mexico in 1951.

Keener married Louis R. Wilton at Dalhart, Texas, in November 1923.The union was an unhappy one and they divorced about 1930. Sheused her maiden name “Keener” for her artistic endeavors, but wasknown as Anna Keener Wilton in her teaching and scholarly pursuits.

PLATE 5Untitled [Saddleback Mountain], 1926

Oil on canvasboard, 14 x 18 inches

PLATE 6The River, circa 1940

Nailhead woodcut, 7 1/8 x 6 1/4 inches

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She was an internationally recognized and honored artist. TheSouthwest in general and Navajo culture in particular served as afocus for much of her work. Written works include Spontaneity inDesign (1923), describing the “scribble” approach to design. Keenerwas a Life Fellow of the International Institute of Arts and Lettersand a charter member of the Art of American Society. In additionto these organizations, she was a member of numerous educationaland art organizations.

Her experiences as an educator also included a stint at Sul RossState College (now University) at Alpine, Texas, from 1925-26, andfor twelve years as art professor at Eastern New Mexico College(now University). While at Portales, Keener also maintained astudio in Santa Fe. She retired from ENMC in 1953 and moved fulltime to Santa Fe. Keener actively promoted art in education andeveryday life and was among the organizers of the New MexicoArts Commission. As a member of Artists Equity, Inc., she workedfor legislation to establish a National Council of the Arts.

NEW DEAL AND EXHIBITIONSKeener also participated in the New Deal art programs underPresident Franklin D. Roosevelt. She painted a mural, Zuni IndianPottery Woman, for the McKinley County Courthouse at Gallup,New Mexico, in 1942. And, she allegedly ran the New Deal ArtCenter at Gallup.3

While teaching, Keener maintained an impressive exhibitionschedule. She exhibited in group exhibitions across the UnitedStates, sending a block print to the “Midwestern Artists Exhibition”at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1925, and at the “ExpositionInternational Federation of Business and Professional Women” atthe Stedelyk Museum in Amsterdam in 1933, for example. Amongher solo exhibitions were those at Dalhart (1930); Ball State Teacher’sCollege, Muncie, Indiana (1931); and Amarillo, Texas (1932); andat the New Mexico Arts Commission in Santa Fe (1967).

In 1969 Keener said: “I am stimulated by everything. Using newmedia (which in itself is exciting), each day challenges me to createsomething fresh and meaningful and of interest to others. I hope.”4

Keener was always highly experimental in her work. And, in trueartist fashion, she moved easily back and forth between styles. Forexample, the heavy impasto of her late teens and early 1920s paintings,

PLATE 8Saint Anthony of Padua, 1934

Painted wood, 18 x 6 x 6 inches

PLATE 7Early Morning, Patzcuaro, 1963

Oil over casein on Masonite29 x 21 1/2 inches

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learned under the influence of Sandzen, appears again with her experiments in acrylic polymers in the 1960s. The stylization of forms she used while living in Dalhart in the late 1920s is similar intreatment to Lloyd Albright’s work of the same period. This stylizationof form re-emerges in the 1970s. Likewise her Regionalist style of the1940s resurfaces in the 1960s and 1970s. In this way, Keener neverfelt locked into a particular “Anna Keener look.” She merely createdhowever her muse dictated.

Borrowing from both private and public collections, with this exhibitionPanhandle-Plains Historical Museum presents a retrospective ofKeener’s work from her time in Kansas and Texas to the conclusionof her career in Santa Fe. Sixty-five works in oil, acrylic, watercolor,lithography, block print, clay and wood are included in the exhibition.

Given the number of works from her early exhibition checklists, thebulk of Anna Keener’s paintings from the late teens to about 1940remain unlocated. Moreover, while not a prolific printmaker, herblock prints and lithographs are exemplary and very difficult to find.Finally, her work as a sculptor was completely unknown. Hopefullythis exhibition will provide the opportunity for a reassessment forher work so Anna Keener might rightfully assume her position inthe history of art in Texas and New Mexico.

Michael R. Grauer, Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs/Curator of Art and Western HeritagePanhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas December 2014

PLATE 10Untitled [Mother and Child], n.d.

Clay, 10 x 8 x 8 inches

PLATE 9The Apple, 1941

Watercolor, 24 x 19 inches

1 Virginia Scharff, “Introduction: Women Envision the West, 1890-1945,” Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995): 2.

2 “The Yeomen (F) served in secretarial and clerical positions, though some weretranslators, draftsmen, fingerprint experts, ship camouflage designers andrecruiting agents. Most were posted at Naval installations in the continentalUnited States, frequently near their homes, processing the great volume ofpaperwork generated by the war effort. Yeomen (F), all of whom held enlistedranks, continued in service during the first months of the post-war Naval reductions. Their numbers declined steadily, reaching just under four thousandby the end of July 1919, when they were all released from active duty. Yeomen(F) were continued on inactive reserve status, receiving modest Retainer Pay,until the end of their four-year enlistments, at which point all women exceptNavy Nurses disappeared from the uniformed Navy until 1942.”http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/prs-tpic/females/yeoman-f.htm

3 Kathryn A. Flynn, Treasures on New Mexico Trails: Discover New Deal Art and Architecture (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1995): 281.

4 Artists of Santa Fe, 23.

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ANNA KEENERAn Artist Who’s One of Us

PLATE 11Wyoming Hunters, 1970s

Oil on canvasboard, 18 x 14 inches

PLATE 12Silhouette, 1961

Acrylic polymer latex on Masonite25 x 29 inches

“But there is beauty here, the beauty of space and of freedom, andthe beauty of the wind feeling its way along the brown, grassy swellsand ruffling the yellow ridges. It is strong, stark beauty, having sofew ornaments that each plane, each shadow and broken feature ofthe land, must play an intense part in the composition, subtly forcingthe eye out on the horizon and up to the sky.”

A.C. Greene, A Personal Country, University of North Texas Press, 1969

Imagine living in Dalhart, TX in 1910. Dalhart was founded as a railroad town at the intersection of the Chicago, Rock Island &

Pacific Railroad and Ft. Worth & Denver Railroad. Only eight yearsafter incorporation, and 3 years after building its own water tower,livestock outnumbered human inhabitants 8:1 in Dallam County.Most of the fabled XIT Ranch had been divided up and sold. The nearest ‘big’ town is Amarillo, 60 miles away. I am sure the first thingthat comes to your mind is that Dalhart must have been a great placeto be a young artist. You would be correct.

One of the ‘compartments’ of my personal art preferences belongs tothose that actually dug some roots into my particular corner of theLlano Estacado; experienced the beauty, abundance, depravity, anger,softness and subtleness of this corner of Paradise. For this experientialartistry the Fountainhead is Dalhart, and one of the primary springsis Anna E. Keener.

My own journey to discover Ms. Keener actually came, not throughher art, but from the many lives and links she touched after she leftDalhart. As I was researching the Prairie Printmakers, I discoveredthat Ms. Keener studied with Birger Sandzen at Bethany College (andthat he actually penned a recommendation letter for her first job application); that she taught with Elizabeth Keefer (Boatwright) whilethey were both at Sul Ross State Teacher’s College; and that Ms. Keenerand Ms. Keefer were the two primary art teachers for Mr. James Swann,of Merkel, TX, who went on to be a renowned printmaker and Secretaryof the Prairie Printmakers. That link to James Swann is even more interesting to me when I realized that James Swann’s first publishedprint Lone Pine Estes Park was printed while he was a manager atSouthwestern Engraving Co. of Amarillo; with a direct connection toMargaret Seewald Roberts.

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During my research of Ms. Keener’s life, I discovered her unique wayof expressing the Texas Panhandle through what she learned at BethanyCollege. Throughout her landscapes, prints and etchings, I discoveredthat she had a masterful and distinct interpretation of depicting thevastness and light. What makes it so wonderful to me is that, evenafter leaving the Texas Panhandle, her heart still contained a vast inventory of desire and passion to continue dipping back into her Panhandle roots for subjects. As her career spanned through Arizona,Ohio, Indiana and New Mexico; she continued to not only depictTexas Panhandle scenes, but also participated in many local shows.Of particular interest to me is that, even after she had obtained a levelof success and accomplishment, in 1964 she sent an inventory of herwork to the Coon Memorial (Dalhart) Hospital Auxiliary show, tosupport their endeavors.

Throughout her life, travels, education, contacts and experiences,Anna E. Keener never forgot, or marginalized where she came from.She saw in our open spaces and barren landscapes the same beautythat we who live here embrace above mountains, seascapes andcityscapes. She painted and printed OUR Panhandle.

Scott Higginbotham, Dumas, TexasDecember 2014

And in the morning I was ridingOut through the breaks of that long plain,

And leather creaking on the quietingWould sound with trot and trot again.I lived in time with horse hoof falling;I listened well and heard the callingThe earth, my mother, bade to me,

Though I would still ride wild and free.And as I flew out in the morning,Before the bird, before the dawn, I was the poem, I was the song.

My heart would beat the world a warning –Those horsemen now rode all with me,And we were good, and we were free.

– Buck Ramsey, “Anthem”Published in Buck Ramsey’s Grass2005 Texas Tech University Press

PLATE 13Herefords on the Range, 1963Oil on canvas, 21 x 25 inches

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PLATE 14Dawn on the Rita Blanca, circa 1935

Oil on Masonite, 12 x 14 inches

PLATE 15The Good Earth, 1952

Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches

PLATE 16Truchas, New Mexico, 1951

Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches

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PLATE 17Snow Clouds, 1970

Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 inches

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PLATE 18Madonna of the Rio Grande, 1961

Acrylic polymer latex on Masonite, 42 x 32 inches

PLATE 19Jet Age, 1960

Casein on Masonite, 30 x 48 inches

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PLATE 20Evening, 1952

Stone lithograph, 12/15, 13 x 10 1/2 inches

PLATE 22Behind the Scene, 1952

Stone lithograph, 10/11, 14 x 10 inches

PLATE 21The Goats, 1941

Stone lithograph, 9 x 12 inches

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PLATE 23Peaceful Valley, 1953

Stone lithograph, 9 x 12 inches

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EXHIBITION CHECKLIST 1. Barn on the Hill, 1920s, Linocut, 10 x 12 inches,

Private Collection2. Moonlight, 1920s, Linocut, 8 x 6 inches, Private Collection3. Untitled [Saddleback Mountain], 1926, Oil on canvasboard,

14 x 18 inches, Private Collection 4. Untitled [Landscape], circa 1920, Oil on canvasboard,

7 x 10 inches, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Friends of Southwestern Art Purchase

5. San Xavier Mission, circa 1930, Woodblock, 9 1/4 x 12 inches, Private Collection

6. Saint Anthony of Padua, 1934, Painted wood, 18 x 6 x 6 inches,Private Collection

7. Dawn on the Rita Blanca, circa 1935, Oil on Masonite, 12 x 14 inches, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Marc C. Bateman

8. The River, circa 1940, Nailhead woodcut, 7 1/8 x 6 1/4 inches, Collection of Becky and Ken Phillips

9. The Apple, 1941, Watercolor, 24 x 19 inches, Private Collection10. The Goats, 1941, Lithograph, 9 x 12 inches, Private Collection11. In Old Santa Fe, 1950s, Photo offset reproduction of lithograph,

7 x 6 inches, Private Collection12. Truchas, New Mexico, 1951, Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches,

Collection of Becky and Ken Phillips13. Behind the Scene, 1952, Lithograph, 14 x 10 inches,

Private Collection14. Evening, 1952, Lithograph, 13 x 10 1/2 inches, Private Collection15. The Good Earth, 1952, Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches,

Private Collection16. Peaceful Valley, 1953, Lithograph, 9 x 12 inches,

Private Collection17. Cabresto Lake No. 102, 1954, Oil pastel on paper,

17 x 12 1/2 inches, Private Collection18. Ecstasy, 1955, Casein on paper, 13 1/2 x 21 inches,

Private Collection19. Reminiscence, 1955, Casein on paper, 20 x 13 1/2 inches,

Private Collection20. The Fox and Owls, 1955, Casein on paper, 13 x 21 inches,

Private Collection21. Castle of the Departed Queen 1956, Casein on paper,

18 x 12 inches, Private Collection22. Spring, 1956, Casein on Masonite, 24 x 20 inches,

Private Collection23. Platoro, 1958, Casein on Masonite, 36 x 49 inches,

Private Collection24. Zuni Designs, 1958, Casein on Masonite,

32 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches, Private Collection25. Three Walk Through the Woods (A Walk in the Woods)

circa 1958, Casein on Masonite, 36 x 16 inches, Private Collection26. Winter in Bonita Canyon, 1959, Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches,

Private Collection27. Bandelier National Monument Tyuonyi, 1960,

Acrylic polymer on panel, 32 x 48 inches, Private Collection28. Erosion, 1960, Casein on Masonite, 32 x 38 inches,

Private Collection29. Jet Age, 1960, Casein on Masonite, 30 x 48 inches,

Private Collection30. Open Door to Science, 1960, Acrylic, 48 x 37 inches,

Private Collection31. Madonna of the Rio Grande, 1961, Acrylic polymer latex

on Masonite, 42 x 32 inches, Private Collection32. Our Lake, 1961, Acrylic polymer on canvas, 24 x 20 inches,

Private Collection

33. Silhouette, 1961, Acrylic polymer latex on Masonite, 25 x 29 inches, Private Collection

34. Alert, 1962, Acrylic gel on gessoed panel, 34 x 16 inches, Private Collection

35. A Pilgrimage, 1963, Acrylic polymer on Masonite, 40 x 32 inches, Private Collection

36. Early Morning, Patzcuaro, 1963, Oil over casein on Masonite, 29 x 21 1/2 inches, Private Collection

37. Fawns, 1963, Oil on gessoed Masonite, 37 x 26 inches, Private Collection

38. Herefords on the Range, 1963, Oil on canvas, 21 x 25 inches, Private Collection

39. Maclovio the Pilgrim, 1963, Oil over casein on Masonite, 36 x 18 1/2 inches, Private Collection

40. Street Scene, 1963, Monoprint, 13 x 10 inches, Private Collection41. Event in the Forest, Fantasy Series No. 1, 1964, Acrylic polymer

liquitex on Masonite, 35 1/2 x 28 inches, Private Collection42. Madonna Forest Fantasy #2, circa 1964, Acrylic on Masonite,

36 x 28 inches, Private Collection43. Forest Fantasy Series #3, 1965, Acrylic polymer and gel on

Masonite, 16 x 27 1/2 inches, Private Collection44. Forest Fantasy Series #6, circa 1964, Acrylic on Masonite,

35 1/2 x 27 1/2 inches, Private Collection45. Forest Fantasy Series #7, circa 1964, Acrylic gel on Masonite,

36 x 28 inches, Private Collection46. A Northern New Mexico Home, 1965, Oil on gessoed Masonite,

23 x 31 inches, Private Collection47. Old Man By Window, 1965, Casein on Masonite,

16 x 11 1/2 inches, Private Collection48. Mexico Series, 1964, Monoprint, 10 1/2 x 12 inches,

Private Collection49. Homeward Bound, 1966, Acrylic on Canvas, 45 x 50 inches,

Private Collection50. Deer By Our Pond No. 83, 1967, Acrylic on paper mounted on

Masonite, 18 x 14 inches, Private Collection51. Petroglyphs Series #6, 1968, Acrylic on Masonite, 36 x 12 inches,

Private Collection52. Petroglyphs Series #10, 1968, Acrylic, 28 x 36 inches,

Private Collection53. Petroglyphs Series #11, 1968, Acrylic gel on Masonite,

36 x 28 inches, Private Collection54. Zion, 1969, Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches, Private Collection55. Dream Lake, 1970, Oil on canvas, 22 x 28 inches,

Private Collection56. Snow Clouds, 1970, Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 inches,

Private Collection57. Orchids, 1970s, Oil on canvas, 18 x 12 inches, Private Collection58. Wyoming Hunters, 1970s, Oil on canvasboard, 18 x 14 inches,

Private Collection59. A Leaf, A Bone, and Stone, n.d., Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches,

Private Collection60. Chamisa and Asters No. 107, n.d., Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches,

Private Collection61. Freeways and Bridges No. 64, n.d., Acrylic polymer on Masonite,

34 x 16 inches, Private Collection62. Louisiana Mill, n.d., Linoleum block on paper, 6 x 9 inches,

Private Collection63. Rocks and Cedars, n.d., Oil on board, 24 x 18 inches,

Private Collection 64. The Market, n.d., Oil on canvas mounted on Masonite,

27 1/8 x 19 1/2 inches, Private Collection 65. Untitled [Mother and Child], n.d., Clay, 10 x 8 x 8 inches,

Private Collection

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This publication is funded by Cynthia and Bill Gayden

CREDITSThis catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibitionAnna E. Keener: Southwestern Regionalist

An exhibition organized by: Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texaswww.panhandleplains.org

September 13, 2014 – February 15, 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced ortransmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or information storage or retrievalsystems without permission in writing from the publisher.

Designed and Published by: WinshipPhillips.com

Printed by: CENVEO/Trafton, Amarillo, Texas

Copyright©2014

ISBN: 978-0-9893719-1-9First Edition: 500 copies

LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITIONWe are grateful to the following lenders, whose generosity in sharing works from their collections has made the exhibition possible:

Mr. and Mrs. Marc C. BatemanScott HigginbothamBecky and Ken PhillipsPrivate Collection

ANNA E. KEENERS O U T H W E S T E R N R E G I O N A L I S T

PANHANDLE-PLAINS HISTORICAL MUSEUM2503 4th Avenue • Canyon, Texas 79015

806 651 2244 • www.panhandleplains.org