Oil painting -> List of Painters ->Dulah Marie Evans

Dulah Marie Evans

Early Days: Dulah Marie Evans was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa. She attended William Penn University and graduated from The Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied under John Vanderpoel and Frederick Richardson. While a student at The Art Institute, Dulah spent her summers in Saugatuck, Michigan, studying under John Christen Johansen and other prominent artists. She completed her postgraduate work at the Art Students League in New York, where she won many first place awards in illustration classes under the instruction of Walter Appleton Clark. She also studied under Charles Hawthorne in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and at the New York School of Art under William Merritt Chase.

Career:

This was the 'Golden Age of Illustration' (1865-1917) and Dulah was part of it. She held a place in the prestigious Tree Studio building in Chicago from 1903 through 1905 along with other well-known painters such as Pauline Palmer, Walter Marshall Clute, Louis Betts, and sculptor Julia Bracken Wendt, with whom she developed a close friendship. During these years, Dulah was working as an illustrator and freelance commercial artist, creating images for the covers of magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, and Ladies' Home Journal.

Dulah also accepted commissions from the Armour Food Company and Santa Fe Railroad, both headquartered in Chicago at the time. These commissions often took Dulah to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to photograph Native American subjects in their daily routine and performing ritualistic dances.

Many of Dulah's Southwest photographs would be used in later years as the subjects for her paintings, woodcuts, lithographs, and etchings. She completed a series of three paintings related to The Deer Dance of the Tesuque Indians in 1905.