FEB. 5 - 8 VICTORIA HUTSON HUNTLEY -- FULL STORY

JANUARY 21-24 PART I: ROCKWELL KENT 1928-1935

- January 20, 2020

100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2019

Victoria Hutson Huntley – Full Story

Feb. 5- 8, 2020

ABOVE – Victoria Ebbels Hutson Huntley (1900-1971) working with one of her lithography stones. Photo from the Huntley papers online from the Archives of American Art. SOURCE

Once I began the series about Victoria Hutson Huntley, I strayed from her story. I’ve decided to do an entire entry from start to finish entirely about her without the side trips. The old entries will remain on the website for now. The first part of what’s below is a repeat, but I have done some rewrites and made some additions. The last part is new material. I present this story for two reason: First, to show a different side of Rockwell Kent, the more kind and generous person. Second, to give some notice to one of the struggling female artists of the period.

THAT DELIGHTFUL MOOD OF YOUTH

…to conquer heat, to cut with a silver sword the (terrible) humidity and work from dawn to dusk, serene and mystical, in early morning, sweating {from} ten ‘till five; thereby affirming your still fresh and vital powers to make full and flexible adjustment to new circumstances, new conditions. This is my idea of Youth. I intend to always remain young. You too, -- we are of the same race.

         Victoria Hutson Huntley from Florida to Rockwell Kent, Sept. 15, 1946

Rugged, clean cut, disciple of revolt, he seeks the truth. A mental machine well oiled, a spirit unafraid, pleasantly smiling, direct, he asks no quarter, but dwells in that delightful mood of youth, adventuring after life, thrilled by beauty just enjoyed, beckoned ever onward by a truth not far away. Always there is the truth which he has found and recorded; always there is a more complete vision which beckons to him.

         F. Newlin Price referring to Rockwell Kent in International Studio, quoted in American Artists by Ivan Narodny, with an introduction by Nicholas Roerich. Roerich Museum Press, 1930.

Sometime in 1929, artist Victoria Ebbels Hutson writes to Rockwell Kent, whom she may have met about 1920. I am arranging an exhibition of lithographs of three famous American artists and you head the list!  Mr. {Erhard}Weyhe is lending me a group of lithographs – which include numbers of yours and others which I am offering to out of town women’s clubs and museums. I plan to give an opening lecture and shall…talk of you and others. Weyhe established his gallery at 794 Lexington Avenue, NYC, in 1919. Victoria asks Rockwell for even more information of your ever-interesting life and activities than I can glean from books and – such well-informed friends as Carl {Zigrosser}. She also asks for assurance that she has his consent to talk about his life.

Kent responds on May 29: I think I can help you most, since I am one of the subjects of your lectures, by giving you an absolute free hand to dispense to your hearers, as fully as authorized by me, anything that you may ever have heard about me, or that your  imagination can suggest as being at all consistent with my nature as you may care to picture it. He sends her a copy of the American Magazine with an article about him for which there is some basis of fact for most that is written there...{though} it has been pretty thoroughly sublimated into fancy by the gifted writer. It may therefore furnish good material for a talk. Kent also refers her to the May 1928 issue of Creative Art with an article he wrote about himself; the book Recent Gains in American Civilization which included an essay of his; and a copy of the Bookman with a review of one of Walter Pach’s books that expresses something of the regard with which I hold critics.

Victoria Ebbels was born on Oct. 9, 1900 in swampy and mosquito-infested Hasbrouk Heights, New Jersey. Her father was not a country person but acquiesced to his wife who was, so he bought the property. Everyone got malaria but Mr. Ebbels, so they moved to NYC when Victoria was only six months old. She drew and painted as soon as she could hold the tools. At age twelve she began attending classes at the Art Students League on Saturday mornings, and continued private lessons through high school. After graduation she convinced her parents to send her to the Art Students League instead of college. While Rockwell Kent is off to Alaska in 1918, Ebbels studied with John Sloan, Robert Henri, and Max Weber. (After her first marriage in 1925 to William K. Huston, she studied with Kenneth Hayes Miller. On Oct. 29, 1935, their daughter, Hazel, was born.) She knew George Bellows and some other of Kent’s friends and associates, and studied briefly with George Luks (one of Robert Henri's Group of Seven). She writes that Luks made her angry because he painted over her pictures. I was impatient and stormy and as soon as a teacher praised my work several times I left their class. Sloan was smart. He was kindly but his Irish temper and salty wisdom kept me with him. We became real friends. Weber only praised my work once, saying, “You will do things.” Luks prohisized {sic} that I would be a mural painter. (She would produce two murals, one at the Springfield New York Post office in 1937, and another at the Greenwich, Connecticut Post Office the next year.) During her three years at the Art Students League we can be certain she learned of Rockwell Kent, and may have met him. Sloan had a habit of beginning his classes by telling his students that he had nothing to teach them about earning a living as an artist. That may have encouraged Ebbels to enroll in the Teacher’s College at Columbia University. That got her a job in Denton, Texas at the College of Industry (later called the State Teachers College for Women). Teaching is the best discipline an artist can receive, she later wrote, and it is also creatively stimulating. Teaching also gave her the opportunity to discover new talent, which happened in 1922 while teaching in Denton.

BELOW – Victoria Ebbels Hutson, from the AAA online.

As she was recording attendance in class one day, the point of her pencil broke. A young student sitting in the front row, Texie Myers, quickly handed her a new pencil. As the March 12, 1923 Marshall Messenger (Texas) reported: Miss Ebbels took the little implement, was about to proceed with calling the roll, when she paused in amazement. # Beautifully carved on the tip of the pencil, almost alive in its sheer beauty of form and expression, was a running figure in bas relief suggesting the archaic Greek period. Its perfection of line denoted it as coning from the hand of one gifted far beyond the range of ordinary ability. # Questioning revealed the work had been done with an old razor blade and a pocketknife during odd hours of the day. Miss Myers, at that time 21 years old, had profited until then by no course of instruction. She was utterly untaught. Texie came from a large family – her father a waterworks engineer. As a child while her siblings played and did chores, she carved tiny figures out of spools and match sticks. Miss Ebbels gave Texie some wood blocks to work with and the results were stunning. Victoria helped Texie get recognized which also ended up helping her own career.

BELOW – Newspaper photo of Texie Myers from the May 21, 1922 Vancouver Sun (British Columbia).

In later years Miss Ebbels described the incident: I wrote to John Sloan about her work and he urged me to send them north {Texie’s woodblocks} to one of the early exhibitions of the Society of Independent Artists. I did. They received unusual attention professionally. The student had given me her carvings and I thought they should be shown to a fine art gallery so…I took them to Carl Zigrosser at Weyhe Gallery in N.Y.C. # Carl Zigrosser was impressed and asked to show them. As I was leaving, he asked “How about you? You are an artist, I would like to see your work.” My response was, “Well, I am just a student and now am busy with my little daughter.” His answer was a brief, “Bring in your work.” I did. And Carl Zigrosser kept everything I brought and offered me an exhibition if I felt I could continue in the direction of several of the paintings. We see how helping to advance her student’s career, resulted in a boost for herself.

ABOVE -- Texie Myers was featured in the 1923 Independent’s Show. Her woodcarving, Group of Dancers, is at left. SOURCE

BELOW – Myers saw some significant success and recognition at least through the 1930s. I haven’t done extensive research, but the furthest I’ve traced her is to this May 2, 1935 article in the Shreveport Journal (Louisiana). About a year after this article appeared, both Texie’s mother and father died of natural causes with days of each other as noted in the April 7, 1936 Marshall News (Texas).

Victoria Ebbels Huston Huntley was a student at the Art Students League just as Rockwell Kent’s first book Wilderness was published in 1920. She studied under some of his teachers and knew several of his friends. She probably met him during these early years before she went to Texas, but the first contact I find is in her letter to him on Jan 13, 1927. By this time, she is married to William K. Hutson.

BELOW – From the Nov. 2, 1924 Standard Union (Brooklyn, NY)

By 1927 Victoria Ebbels Hutson has a two-year-old daughter, Hazel. She addresses the Nov. 13 letter as Dear Rockwell Kent and writes: You may be painting the North Pole or some other far away point. If you are in the city, I want you to see my pictures. Mr. Zigrosser at Weyhe has a group of wash drawings which I did in Texas. I would like to know what you think of “Women of the Wind” and “Rain Maidens.”

Victoria writes to Kent again on Aug. 3, 1927, mentioning that she saw him at the Maverick but was unable to speak with him, thus this letter. The Maverick at Woodstock, NY was an early New York art colony founded in 1910 by Hervey White, who has sometimes been called “the first hippie.” The colony was and still is famous for outdoor music festivals, art exhibits and theatrical performances. White had been in Colorado in the 1890s. His sister had told him of a free-ranging white stallion known as the “Maverick Horse.” The next year he wrote a poem about the horse. When he founded the New York art colony, he named it after that wild white stallion – a symbol of freedom, spirit and individuality. SOURCE 

Victoria continues her letter: It is a long time since we met in the Fine Arts Gallery in New York. She may be referring to the Fine Arts Building where Marie Sterner was exhibiting work from the Junior Arts Patrons group. After that meeting, Kent sent her a letter an inspirational letter that she never forgot. (I have not been able to find that letter. It could be in her letters at the AAA, but those haven’t been scanned and put online.) What Victoria writes next is echoes Kent’s words in Wilderness:

Some of the thoughts you expressed, she wrote, were a great help to me in the following years which I spent in Texas. # That was a wonderful time for me, one in which my dream of leaving “the crowd,” almost came true. In his Wilderness journal, Kent writes on Feb. 19, 1919 about how he and Rockie have both together by chance turned out of the beaten, crowded way and come to stand face to face with that infinite and unfathomable thing which is the wilderness; and here we have found OURSELVES – for the wilderness is nothing else. 

BELOW – The first page of Victoria’s Aug. 3, 1927 letter to Rockwell Kent. Archives of American Art.

Victoria continues: Though people were there, they didn’t count. It was the earth so real and unadorned, so much the vital substance and the vastness of the sky that lived for me. And out of an apparent nothing, all riches blossomed. # That was happiness of a kind remote and ecstatic. But this vivid life of the now! How I wish that mankind could find their mate and enter the rhythm of this sweet reality. I wish that you might meet my husband and see my happy babe! The natural life that was intended for us all, feet planted in the earth, with spirits soaring to the stars. 

Happily married now in 1927, in later years she recalled that when she did find a husband in 1925 – everyone said “how dreadful, you’ll never become an artist now!” In those days everyone was talking about “free love. She ends this Aug. 3, 1927 letter to Kent – So out of the fullness of my heart, I send this little greeting to you and Mrs. Rockwell {Frances}. I was so happy to hear from Carl Zigrosser of your happiness. Please give my warm, good wishes to her and I hope that for you both much beauty may always be.

ABOVE – Victoria Hunley 1963. Photo inscribed to her daughter, Hazel. Huntly papers online at the Archives of American Art.

It is most likely that Victoria had read Wilderness shortly after it was published in 1920. From the 1927 correspondence between Rockwell Kent and Victoria Ebbels Hutson, it appears they meet about 1920-21 while she is studying at the Art Student League. This is before she goes to Texas as a teacher. She refers to an inspiring and encouraging letter Kent wrote to her in response to one she sent him. It is clear she admires him, and has been influenced by his first book, Wilderness. Among Victoria’s papers at the Archives of American Art, are some undated newspaper clippings. One headline, “Artists Portrayed by Themselves and Friends,” tells of an exhibit organized by Leon Dabo at the Roerich Museum. One of the portraits listed is the strong drawing of Rockwell Kent by Victoria E. Hutson. The article must be dated during 1925 or later since she is listed as Victoria Hutson.

Victoria Hutson’s next letter to Kent is from Feb. 19, 1929. She asks him to present her name so her work can be shown at an upcoming Pittsburgh exhibit. Carl Zigrosser told her he would speak to Rockwell about this, but Victoria knows both men are quite busy -- so she decides write directly to Kent. Here we see how much influence Kent’s first book, Wilderness, has had upon her. Some day when you are at the Gallery will you autograph my copy of “Wilderness”? I’ve always wanted to ask you to do this! I don’t believe the book could have meant more to anyone than it did to me.  Apparently, the two were unable to meet in person, so on March 5, 1929 Victoria writes: “Wilderness” is being mailed to Carl (Zigrosser) and awaits your arrival at the Gallery on your next trip to the city. # Thank you for sending my name to Pittsburgh. I so hope the jury is not too stern.

BELOW – The letter Victoria sent to Rockwell Kent dated Feb. 19, 1929 that mentions Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska (1920). Archives of American Art.

By Oct. 1 Victoria is returning some of the biographical materials Kent has sent her.  Apparently, the lecture series she planned didn’t work out. By now she addresses him as My dear Mr. Kent. Though she could have used the money generated from that lecture series, she is happy now with more time to paint. One of her canvases has passed the jury at the Carnegie. She has been reading the newspaper accounts of the Greenland shipwreck Kent will eventually tell in N by E (1930). She tells him of her upcoming exhibition at the Weyhe Gallery in February 1930 and hopes that Rockwell will be able to attend. Carl Zigressor is running the Weyhe Gallery during this time, and they represent Rockwell Kent exclusively through the 1930’s.) Kent responds to Victoria on Jan. 5, 1930. He has spoken with Elmer Adler at Pynson Printers, and to Donald S. Klopfer and Bennett Cerf at Random House about her work. Send them a portfolio, Kent tells her and adds, One can never tell when they will be interested in a publishing project that will be just right for you. Kent thanks Victoria for her comments about Wilderness and for her confidence in him as a friend. I will do all that I can to help you make some money, he assures her. That is about all that a friend can do for so real an artist as you are. I am glad that you have not taken a teaching job. The threat of it may, however, have served in some obscure psychic way to have stimulated an interest in your prints. Perhaps one can imagine how important words like these are to a struggling artist like Victoria Hutson – especially from such a famous artist as Rockwell Kent. His moods and whims swung from one extreme to another. He helped many artists and could be most generous.

On Nov. 16, 1930 Victoria apologizes for consistently using Kent’s name as a reference – hoping he doesn’t feel she is taking advantage of him, and noting that he may receive a request for a letter of recommendation for a teaching job at the Buxton Country Day School at Short Hills, NJ.  He replies on Nov. 25 saying he received the request, wrote the letter, and sends her a copy. In that reference letter Kent notes that he has known Victoria for many years and that she has the personality that will make her a “splendid” teacher. As to her work, he adds, I can only say that it is so fine that I am rather surprised that she should be looking for employment as a teacher. She is not only a gifted artist but her work is always characterized by the quality of reflection and thought. On Nov. 28, Victoria writes a revealing four-page letter to Kent.

BELOW – The first page of Victoria’s Nov. 28, 1930 four-page letter to Rockwell Kent. Archives of American Art.

She is most likely responding to his comment in the letter of recommendation that she is so talented as an artist that he can’t understand why she’s looking for a teaching job. She thanks him for his generosity and thoughtfulness, and wishes there were some way could reciprocate with some symbol of my warm thanks. She feels she owes him an explanation as to why she needs to teach. Her husband has limited means and she can barely pay her expenses to support her art. Her lithography stones are especially costly. She’s mostly unknown, has few real connections in the art world, and doesn’t live in the city. If she only had a patron, she wishes. Victoria admits she enjoys teaching and has a talent for it – and it’s a way to earn some money. She thanks him for promoting her work with his publishing friends in New York, and hopes someday to illustrate Thoreau’s essay “Winter” or Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables. The teaching position at Buxton will only take two days a week, giving her plenty of time to work on her art. Last fall Carnegie accepted one of her paintings, but this year both Carnegie and Chicago turned down her work. If it wasn’t for Carl Zigrosser’s support, as well as Rockwell’s, she would be at a loss. She ends: You have been so kind – you have quite warmed my heart. I hope we may meet in the Gallery sometime soon. Won’t you please, please select one of my lithographs when you are in and know that I will inscribe it in gratitude to you. Please – too – won’t you drop the Mrs. and call me – Victoria.

In a Jan. 2, 1931 letter to Kent we learn Victoria doesn’t take the teaching job at Buxton because they can’t pay her enough. The Depression is worsening and private schools are especially hard hit. She has gotten back her copy of the signed Wilderness and is gratified that Kent inscribes it as a friend. In an April 13 letter we learn that she is being considered as illustrator for a book with Elmer Adler. She wants to propose a series of flower lithographs and asks Kent’s advice about that as well as about a fair fee. She writes: You already know, but I can’t help saying again, how deeply I appreciate your generous effort to further my work. It is very fine of you & and like you. It is so rare for any successful artist to consider anyone one but himself. So of course I am very much encouraged and stimulated to produce the best I can. I know I can turn out a beautiful job! My fingers itch to have it go through and to get to work in earnest.

Victoria spent years at the Art Student’s League studying with some of the best artists and teachers. She knows how self-centered artists can be. Kent has been most generous, and that surprises her.  He does have a soft spot, real empathy for the other artists and writers – the sincere ones. Perhaps because of the struggle he experienced. We must remember that Kent is at the peak of his career and his work is in much demand. The Depression is getting worse and artists are especially affected. At this time he’s planning another trip to Greenland and needs the money. He’s producing much non-commercial work – but where’s the money? He’s extremely busy, not only producing, but also with the business end of being an artist.

During these years Rockwell Kent is rising in fame while his work is in great demand. He’s working on his paintings, drawings and lithographs, but he needs more money than those works bring him, so he turns to book illustrations and plates, cards, advertising art, and any work in the Gold Camp that will provide him funds for his next adventure. Then the stock market crash and the Depression. Artists are hit hard along with everyone else. With all this, Rockwell Kent still has time to occasionally help struggling artists like Victoria Hutson.

  

On Jan. 30, 1932 or 33 she writes to Kent that she may be looking for a teaching job again and asks for another reference. Apparently there has been talk about her making frames for Kent, but he tells her in a Feb. 3, 1933 that times are so tough that he can’t give her any work, that if he needs frames he’ll have to order cheap wood. If she gets a teaching offer he’ll be glad to write a reference. He refers her to his lawyer, Philip Lowry– and says he looks forward to having her come to see him.

In a Feb. 10, 1933 letter from artist Victoria Hutson we learn that the referral to his lawyer, Lowry isn’t about her art or her even obtaining work. She and her husband, William Hutson, are seeking a divorce. Just as soon as possible I hope to go ahead with him, she writes. Though my situation is a very involved one, and the future looks ___ and at moments a little frightening – I am not anything but firmly confident that somehow and surely so, I shall survive all this and successfully. I must raise the money for my divorce and also procure a teaching position for the summer as well as next winter. The depression is devastating – but regardless of that, if enough vital energy is projected, the outcome is sure to be successful. So, only, do I think these days – and I am working like a little ant, or the busy bee or some such active animal!

Victoria is also working on an illustrated children’s story and wants to show what she has so far to Kent. The hand writing in this letter has deteriorated, perhaps suggesting the stress she is going through. Rockwell Kent has evolved from an artistic mentor to a personal friend to whom she can, at least to some extent, confide in. This letter ends with an invitation: I do wish we might have you here – before this place is abandoned.  The letters now begin Dear Rockwell and end with, Affectionately, Victoria. On March 13 Kent writes that he has sent off a reference for her to a Philadelphia agency. He adds, Phil Lowry says everything will be all right if you are determined to go ahead; so go to see him again when you are ready for action, or have your husband go see him. Her marriage to William K. Hutson ended in 1933 and soon afterward she married Ralph Huntley, a scientist and mathematician. By Oct. 10, 1933 Victoria is preparing a prospective to send out and asks Kent for some words. She adds a post script: I have a new gift, a birthday gift from Carl {Zigrosser}to me – the volume of Rockwellkentiana (1933, edited by Zigrosser) and I hope you will inscribe it soon. This letter she signs simply, v.

  

Though this correspondence skips to 1947, we do know that Victoria received two federal grants for post office murals during the 1930’s. We don’t know whether Rockwell Kent played any role in helping Victoria get these grants. Kent himself did get a major mural grant from the  Works Progress Administration (WPA) at about the same time, a project that brought him briefly back to Alaska, then to Puerto Rico. The mural he eventually painted at the Federal Post Office Building in Washington, D.C. caused a considerable controversy. I’ll write about that story in a future entry.

BELOW – From the June 30, 1938 Springville Journal (Springville, NY).

BELOW --    A section of “Fiddler’s Green.” 1938 in the lobby of the Springville, NY post office. 12’ x 4’2”  SOURCE

BELOW – A section of “Old Days in Greenwich 1939 in the lobby of the Greenwich, CT Post Office. SOURCE

The next letters skip to September 15, 1947. The years have passed, and Victoria’s  four-page letter reads as if she and Kent haven’t been in contact for quite a while. She is now 46 years old, and Rockwell is 65. Victoria’s husband, Ralph, is a professor at Rollins College. Victoria herself taught one semester of art there, but then resigned. At last I am just {a} happy wife and busy artist, she writes. This is the first period of freedom from teaching – and it is Sweet! The rewards are many. This extreme change (at first bewildering and almost intolerable) now proves a glorious creative adventure. I have entered into Paradise. But the Paradise is two-fold She enjoys the depicting Everglades nature in her art and notes that both Winslow Homer and Audubon ventured to her area but since then no important record in art has been made. Then there’s the other Paradise which can only be built and sustained by yourself, by your own fire of intention – a line of will. It must be earned by Pain, by Joy. I am at work on both. I am set to it. This comment part of the letter seems to echo the ideas of Victoria’s favorite Kent book – Wilderness – the work that probably brought her to Kent in the first place. It’s the simultaneous struggle against the elemental – the wonderful, noble and poisonous the challenge to conquer heat, to cut with a silver sword the (terrible) humidity and work from dawn to dusk, serene and mystical, in early morning, sweating {from} ten ‘till five; thereby affirming your still fresh and vital powers to make full and flexible adjustment to new circumstances, new conditions. This is my idea of Youth. I intend to always remain young. You too, -- we are of the same race. The Florida weather is a challenge for Victoria. Always I have hated Heat, she tells Kent, and loved cold, possessing that kind of blood stream and glands which thrive on zero and sub zero weather. So that you can well imagine that coming here to the hot, humid semi-tropics was not in line, at all, with my private wishes. Although she had a teaching job in the North, she seems to suggest it was her husband’s job that brought them to Florida.

In this Sept. 15, 1947 letter, Victoria Hutson Huntley, lets Kent know she is applying for and wants a reference for a Guggenheim Fellowship – to carry on what is now so richly started in my work here. I assume – because of old friendship – your willingness. In May 1940 she received a $1000 award from The American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters. This was especially gratifying because an artist couldn’t apply for it. She has kept in touch with the good and ever dear Carl Zigrosser and is delighted that he is happy and finally married.

BELOW – Page 1 of Victoria’s Sept. 15, 1947 letter to Rockwell Kent. Archives of American Art.

Kent replies on Sept. 22nd. He’ll be happy to give her a reference. Since he has served in Guggenheim Fellowship juries, he advises her that in his experience the references are not important. They are not even read. Kent is taken by the enthusiasm of her letter though, and writes: If you can impart to your paintings the enthusiasm of your words you will perform a miracle that should be recognized and subsidized by Florida Chamber of Commerce. Your enthusiasm is terrific and I hope a Guggenheim Fellowship will be forthcoming to give you full freedom of expression. He too keeps in touch with Zigrosser. Carl and Laura were here to visit us this summer, {He and Frances divorced about 1939 and Kent married to Shirley Johnston in 1940}and I see him occasionally in New York and Philadelphia. It’s wonderful that he is at last really and happily married.

Victoria responds on Sept. 25 that it’s too bad (Heck, she writes) that he still isn’t on the Guggenheim jury and wonders who is on it now – hoping it isn’t these modern boys…An abstractionist negates, says nothing and the surrealists – hell, all good art has subjective undertones and overtones, - so they just record a half and that is on the borderline, if not entirely in, the realm of the psychopathic. If references are not important, Victoria wonders, what is? The writing section? They’ve told her to send very few of her works.  It is bewildering, she says. Maybe it is all a political game. But the day is too beautiful for her to write such negative words. The morning is glorious, cool and stimulating, she ends her letter. The red birds are singing madly, divinely; that means they’re courtin’ – they court all the time! Every leaf glistens and the wind makes music, playing on the long, slender needles of the tall Southern pines. The last letter in the letter file is from Kent on Sept. 30, 1947. He doesn’t know who the Guggenheim jurors are, but speculates. When I was on the jury, he writes, nothing counted much but the jury’s impression of the work submitted. The outline of the …plan of work was generally read. The simplest, most straightforward plans made the best impression…No. I don’t think it’s a political game at all.

Victoria Hutson Huntley did get a 1948 Guggenheim Fellowship in the Fine Arts.

ABOVE – From the April 12, 1948 Miami News.

BELOW – From the April 27, 1948 Orlando Evening Star (Florida)

What I find most interesting in this story is that Rockwell Kent is not mentioned in any newspaper stories about her; nor is he named in the short bio she wrote found in the AAA files. This seems most odd because of the respect she shows him in her letters for the help he gave her. There could be many reasons for this. Perhaps they had a falling out. Rockwell Kent could burn bridges and alienate friends. On the other hand, I’ve noticed a trend in memoirs about this period from people who knew Kent. Often he isn’t included. Many of these memoirs were written in the late 1940s through the 1950s – a time when Kent had become very political. In fact, it’s quite possible the writers purposely left him out because he was too controversial, especially after he appeared before Sen. Joseph McCarthy and challenged the senator’s authority and patriotism. Unless more evidence comes to light, we may never know the answer in this story.

BELOW – A series of photos from her AAA file showing her at work preparing and printing a lithograph.

I’ve learned little about Victoria’s life after the Guggenheim Fellowship. Apparently, she developed arthritis and became an advocate for its treatment and research.

BELOW – A photo of Victoria beside a painting she donated to an Arthritis Foundation benefit – from the Sept. 3, 1970 Daily Register (Red Bank, NJ.)

BELOW – A few months before her death, this article appeared in the Feb. 25, 1971 Chatham Press (Chatham, NJ).

Victoria Ebbels Hutson Huntley died at her home in Chatham, NJ on June 3, 1970. She was 70 years old. The only obituary I’ve found is only four small paragraphs in the July 8, 1971 Chatham Press.

BELOW – Several weeks after her death, the Millville Library in New Jersey presented a traveling exhibit of her work. The local newspaper (Millville Daily) did a feature story in the Aug. 26, 1971 issue.

BELOW – Victoria Hutson Huntley. SOURCE

SOURCES – I’ve used the online files at the Archives of American (AAA) for both Rockwell Kent and Victoria Hutson Huntley. Regarding Huntley -- I’ve provided references for the newspaper articles I’ve located, and the few internet sites I’ve found.  Some information comes from genealogical records at ancestry.com. Her AAA site has a short biographical sketch, but much of what I learned comes from newspapers, or from a short summary of her life she wrote (in the AAA files) -- perhaps for the Guggenheim or another application. Unless otherwise noted, photos of her come from her AAA page.