Studio Portrait Circa 1896
Studio Portrait Circa 1896
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On June 5, 1907, Fra Dana, a young woman who had married one of Montana's most
successful ranchers 11 years earlier, wrote in her diary:
"went today into the mountains. Snowbanks to the horses' necks, but in the bare spots were those fragile purple lilies that grow only on the heights. There was a cold, pure wind, smelling of pine and sage brush, and to look down over the valley was like looking into the heart of an opal."
By 1907, at the age of 33, Dana had already reached a point in her life that allowed her to contemplate many activities. In 1897, the year after her marriage, she began to study at the Chicago Art Institute with William Merritt Chase. The following 10 years were filled with travel and adventure as a young art student with great hopes for success. She studied in New York and Paris and worked with some of the most important period artists in the history of American Impressionism.
As a woman and aspiring artist she was aware of the stereotypes facing her. A pre- marriage agreement with her husband allowed her to study art and to travel. During part of the year she stayed at the ranch and participated in almost all of the activities. The remainder of her time was spent traveling and living a very different life.
A disparate vision of the landscape emerged in her writing. In 1907 she also wrote:
"Beauty of any kind is a thing held cheap out here in this land of hard realities and glaring sun and alkali. There are no nuances."
She clearly had mixed feelings about her environment and was consumed by conflicting passions. She longed for the culture of the larger cities and the life of an artist. The loneliness of the ranch was overwhelming.
Four years later, on September 28, 1911, Dana had reached the realization that she could no longer bear the strain of trying to live two lives. Childless and stricken with illness she wrote:
"Why am I allowing myself to be cured? I could fight the world and conquer but I cannot fight the world and Edwin too. He will always pull against me in the life that I desire. So I shall give up. He has won. I will never bother him any more with my desires or ambitions. Why struggle? I will go back to the ranch and never ask to go away again and try to content myself with the flowers and books, both of which I love. But the loneliness? And how can one live without making some big effort all the time."
Although her training was the best that any artist could receive, it could not spare her from the role expectations of regional culture. The people in Wyola, the town nearest the Dana Ranch "thought it was just absolutely ridiculous for (Edwin Dana) to allow her to go to Europe like she did," says Clara Thomas, who as a young girl, knew Dana. "This was unheard of in those days. . . . They had no idea . . . at all of her ability or true talent." Dana could have been a great artist if she had been able to devote her life completely to art. The commitment to her husband and to the ranch, however, was more important to her.
One of Dana's responsibilities while at the ranch was to tend to the many household chores and on at least one occasion she expressed her dissatisfaction:
". . . there are two cattle dealers here this week, a surveyor, and a woman selling tombstones. For all of these people I have to make their beds and empty their slops and wait on them. How the spirit doth rebel. Especially at having to talk to them when they are not interesting."
She spent her free hours in her flower garden and in her impressive library with over 2400 volumes. People seldom saw her. She was an enigma to many and the subject of gossip in the community. Privately torn between the life she desired as an artist and a life of solemn commitment to her husband and the ranch, she again phrased her frustration in a diary entry that was written while in New York City:
"If my life is to be bounded by Pass Creek, how can I stand it? I am full enough of life to want friends, music, painting, the theater; all the stimulus of modern movements. It seems a small thing, but it is even a pleasure to speak with someone not of my own family who speaks the English language correctly. That is something I cannot get on Pass Creek.
Dana probably painted vigorously until 1912. Then she resigned herself to the role of rancher's wife, participating in the management of a complex business, and probably did not paint much until she and Edwin Dana moved to Great Falls (They had purchased a ranch near Cascade, MT in 1918) after an epidemic of locusts created an economic hardship and economic restructuring of the 2 A (two Roof) ranch in 1937.
Fra did not live on the ranch at Cascade. She chose to live in the Blackstone Apartments in Great Falls where she once again set aside space for a studio. It was there that she met Mildred Schemm (Author of Winter Wheat), a young writer who probably best understood Dana's dilemma which had been characterized many years earlier in a statement by J. H. Sharp: "She paints like a man!" he said emphatically.
Sharp undoubtedly meant that as a compliment, but its full meaning points to the reason for Dana's distress in her final years. Ms. Schemm described those years as filled with regrets that she had not left the ranch to devote herself completely to painting.
During her lifetime she amassed an extraordinary collection of artwork. Her collection is distinguished by the fact that she did not collect paintings as trophies. All of the pieces are somehow connected to her extensive activities and travels. The landscapes by Sharp, for example, were done on the Dana Ranch and are some of the most striking samples of his work. Because of his regard for her as an artist and her well-trained eye, she was able to choose his finest paintings for her collection.
One of the most striking paintings in the collection is Gabrielle by Alfred Maurer. Gabrielle was Maurer's favorite model and the Mandarin coat that she wears was a favorite garment. Maurer gave the coat to Dana and she wears it in her self portrait, On the Window Seat. The paintings document her life, memorabilia that gives us an insight into a woman who was able to move with ease through the social circles of great artists and the culture of her time.
Dana's own painting confirms an understanding and experimentation with the techniques she learned from those masters. Like the work that she collected, her work embodies personal experience and portrays people and places she knew. From the intimate and charming composition of her portraits to the symbolic still life paintings that characterize feminine mortality, a pleasant mystery emerges to form a narrative as compelling as the paintings themselves.
Her last biographical statement, written in 1947 to Aden Arnold, Chairman of the Art Department at The University of Montana, was brief.
". . . I do not know that there is anything to tell you about my life. My annals are short and simple. I was born, I married, I painted a little, I am ready to die."
*Journal abstracts provided by Mildred Schemm
"Portrait of Edna Dinwiddie (c. 1937)"