Alice Righter Edmiston (1874-1964)
Another student of Moore's who came back to teach at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln was Alice Righter Edmiston. Born in Monroe, Wisconsin, on April 6, 1874, Edmiston moved with her family to Lincoln when she was four years old. She attended the university but, like many before her, went to the Art Institute of Chicago to continue her studies.
After one year in Chicago she moved to New York City and enrolled at the Art Students League. One of her instructors, Frank Vincent DuMond, arranged a summer trip to Paris and Edmiston took advantage of the opportunity. She stayed for an additional nine months, living in the Latin Quarter and visiting Paris studios.[11]
After returning to the states, Edmiston turned to the career path that many other women artists took, namely teaching art at the university level. In 1895-1896 she taught one year each at the University of Nebraska, Southwest Virginia Institute in Bristol, Virginia, and Galloway College in Searchy, Arkansas. It appears she remained an active artist during these years because she was included in the Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha in 1898.
Edmiston became actively involved in art organizations, including the newly developed Nebraska Art Association (formerly the Haydon Art Club). In 1902 she was included in the first Nebraska Art Association exhibit in which local artists were involved. When the Lincoln Artists Guild was formed in 1920, she became president and continued her membership throughout her life.
Even though Edmiston lived in Lincoln and was active in the community, she was also able to travel and spent several spring and summer months in other parts of the country, painting different sites on the east coast and in the South and Southwest. Besides landscapes, cityscapes, and historic sites, she painted florals and genre scenes. She was also interested in keeping up with new developments in art, working with cubist techniques and even experimenting in abstraction. An example of her innovative spirit can be seen in Provincetown Church, ca. 1927 (ILL. 3). The artist combined simplified shapes with unusual colors and varying textures to create a rural street scene with depth and substance.
In 1923, Edmiston won a $100 prize for her work in the Society of Fine Arts exhibit in Omaha. Then in 1934, she was included in the Joslyn Art Museum's Five States Exhibit and repeated the honor again in 1936, 1937, 1938, 1940, and 1941. She was given a one-person show at the Joslyn Art Museum in 1944 that focused on her monotypes. She had works purchased for the Vanderpoel Collection in Chicago and her art is included in the permanent collection of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and the Museum of Nebraska Art in Kearney. Edmiston died on March 29, 1964 at the age of 89.
(Early Nebraska Women Artists, 1880-1950, by Sharon L. Kennedy, www.tfaoi.com 2/23/2012)
