Ruth Grafstrom

 

Today I found out that I'm related to Ruth Grafstrom. She is my Great Grandfather Nelson's cousin, her Mother and his Father were siblings. Here is some incredible info about Ruth.

One of America's greatest Fashion artists, Ruth Grafstrom's illustrations for Vogue,  including many Vogue covers had a profound influence on the style of fashion illustration in America from the 1920s through the 1940s.  Brilliant and fiercely independent, Ruth Grafstrum was one of the few women artists in the first half of the 20th century to achieve international success in a field dominated by male artists.  Her work had an immediate and lasting effect on the appearance of the magazine through her distinct bold,  linear style and modernist painterly approach to fashion illustration. Her work was imitated by scores of magazine illustrators in the first half of the century and gave a new style to the genre that continues to this day. 

RUTH SIGRID GRAFSTROM  was born in Rock Island, Illinois in 1905. Grafstrom came from a highly artistic family, her father a painter, and mother, a ceramicist. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and at the Colorossi Academy in Paris with Henri Morriset.  Highly precocious, at age 19, Grafstrom was elected to the Art Alliance of America ( 1924 ). In 1937 she was invited to be included in Who's Who in American Art. In 1966 Walt Reed invited her to be represented in his seminal book, " The Illustrator in America ".

As a child Ruth studied under her father, the noted Swedish/American painter, Olof Grafstrom (1855 - 1933) who settled in 1886 in the Pacific Northwest (before returning to Sweden in 1927). Ruth's father's landscape paintings had a strong influence on the Northwest School of realist painters, and he was a close friend of the noted Swedish/American painter, Birger Sandzen and the Swedish master, Anders Zorn who Ruth knew as a child. In a Vogue article she credits her greatest early influence to Matisse, whose son gave her an original by his father. Other influences were the works Edgar Degas, Gustave Klimt, and Zorn. She was a close friend of the painters, Guy Pene DuBois and Everett Shinn both of whom she promoted in a gallery exhibition in the 1930s at her East 66 St. New York studio. 

As fashion artist for Vogue in the 1920's and 30's, Grafstrom traveled frequently between her studio in Suffern New York to assignments at the London and Paris offices of Vogue. In addition to American Vogue she made a significant contribution to the look of British Vogue into the 1940s. (In 1940 she shared her East 66th St. studio with the editor of British Vogue.).

In the 1930s and 1940s Grafstrom painted full page illustrations for Ladies's Home Companion, Deliniator Magazine, the Matson Lines, Neiman Marcus, Macys, Gimbels  I. Magnin, Coty, McCalls  and Colliers Illustrated Weekly.  Her work brought her many awards and exhibitions including annual exhibitions at the New York Art Dealers Club, The Society of Illustrators in New York and the Seligman Gallery. 

After World War ll Grafton retired from fashion art due to poor health. Seeking a warmer climate, she moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1949, before going on to establishing a studio home on George St. in St. Augustine, Florida where she remained for the rest of her life. There, she continued to be active as a painter through the 1960s and 1970s.  Tragically, after a brilliant life as a fashion luminary, she fell on hard times and obscurity in her last years, and was forced to liquidate and auction what little remained of her art collection and furniture. The early oil portraits and fashion works from the 20s, 30s and 40s that survived are rare. 


Here are some of her pieces:

For Father's day, my Aunt Cassie got my Uncle Joe a "lot" of Ruth's things including two oil portraits (see below) some illustrations, letters and photographs. Also below, you will find a photo that was part of the lot of Ruth and her family, my Great Grandfather is on the far left.

I have always had an intense love for fashion and not just shopping, most women love shopping, but I mean for fashion. The history, the art, the designers, the craft. It's fascinating to me. I also find her involvement in advertising very interesting, considering myself, my sister, my cousin and two of my uncles are all in advertising and all are in creative advertising (except me). I feel a true connection to this woman I know little about. The end of her life did not seem a happy one and I'm very curious to learn why. She had a career that was unparalleled by very few women at the time and even today her accomplishments would be impressive, fashion is still a very male dominated field when it comes to creative opportunities. I have to wonder what went wrong. All info I can find online suggests she basically fell off the map after the war. 

To be continued.................iz