PA Woman MODERNIST Artist DOROTHY W. HUTTON ca 1945 Canada Etching QUEBEC CITY For Sale

Rare period Modernist etching entitled “Quebec City” by listed (Askart, etc.) female artist Dorothy Wackerman Hutton (Am., 1899-2001). Artist signed and titled in pencil lower margin. Plate size: 11 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches. Sheet size: 15 3/4 x 15 3/8 inches. Unframed. Ships flat, not rolled.

I consider the condition to be very good since it’s not laid down (not glued to a backer) and no matting is glued to the front of it. The paper appears handmade because the edges have that look.

Really rich, deep ink color here. Doesn’t look faded out at all. Slight paper discoloration from old matting window doesn’t bother me since it’ll hide once appropriately matted. On the back, at the top of the paper, there are two pieces of tape from the old hinging. They could be removed, I guess, if there’s any point to that.

The artist, Dorothy Hutton, created a unique aerial view of Quebec here. As a sub-theme, we have ‘transportation’ by steamboat / ferry. Because of the location of Quebec City, this would be the St. Lawrence River depicted.

I think it’s also a depiction of the Petit-Champlain (Quartier Petit Champlain) district of this French Canadian city. The ferry would be the Quebec-Levis ferry. The ferry would land at Old Quebec around Petit-Champlain or Old Port but there’s an upper town, Haute-ville / Le Haute Ville, that overlooks it.

It seems to me that you’d get to Quebec (from where I am: east coast, USA) by taking Rt. 95 into Maine, then going up Rt. 201. The border would be around Sandy Bay Township. That’s the Armstrong-Jackman Border Crossing. Then, I’d take Quebec Route 173 to Levis.

I was surprised to see in this etching that the signs are in English, although maybe “Buffet” is French (?) and I guess in either language they’re going to call a ferry a ‘ferry’. But, the one sign does read as, “While In Quebec, Take A Boat Trip”.

According to Dorothy W. Hutton’s artist-daughter, Elizabeth Hutton (Betty) MacDonald: “Every Monday night both my parents went to the (Philadelphia) Sketch Club to do etchings – actually my Father often went up to the workshop and worked from the model, but was on call to turn the etching press as the women in the group found this difficult”.

Since as of 2023, Betty is 96 years old, she was born around 1927. It seems to me her parents would’ve met in Minnesota. Either way, Dorothy and her artist-husband lived in New York ca. 1930-33 and then relocated to Philadelphia by 1933.

At the Philadelphia Plastic Club, they have an annual “Dorothy Wackerman Hutton Prize” in the Annual Member’s Medal Show. Dorothy had won many prizes there beginning as early as 1943.

It’s important to note that Dorothy Wackerman was a notable artist before she married her artist-husband, Hugh McMillen Hutton. Both of them studied in Minneapolis. She trained under Mary Moulton Cheney, Richard Lahey and Anthony Angarola.

By 1918, she was at the University of Minnesota. But, in 1914, when the artist was only 15 years old, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts awarded Dorothy Wackerman one of seven scholarships for the coming year. She got the First Year Design Scholarship.

Dorothy was known as a muralist in 1923, having done “Loring Park Willows” and “Mississppi River Bank”. She was associated with the Minneapolis School of Art (today’s Minneapolis College of Art and Design). This info can be found in the 1923 American Art Directory. Dorothy also trained under Vaclav Vytlacil. She had an exhibit at the Bradstreet Galleries in 1924.

She subsequently studied with André L\'Hote in Paris and with Earl Horter and Hobson Pitman in Philadelphia, whereupon she pursued a career as a freelance artist in New York.

By the early 1930’s, Dorothy was active in the New York City and Philadelphia areas. Her prints are in collections such as that of the Yale University Art Gallery and her paintings sell at sales such as Bonhams. Her work is also in the permanent collections of institutions including the Library of Congress, the Harvard Art Gallery, and the Richmond, VA Art Museum.

Dorothy Wackerman was recognized as an artist as early as 1914. I’m unsure at what point she became such a great printmaker. But, in the 1949 Print Collectors Quarterly, they show one of her etchings and note that she exhibited at the NAD in the exhibition of the SAEGL&W and in 1948 at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. In 1951, Dorothy and an artist named Marguerite Kumm together exhibited 79 prints in a special exhibit in the division of graphic arts of the United States National Museum of the Smithsonian Institution.

Dorothy’s bio is really extensive. See her entry in the Who Was Who in American Art. From 1944-46, Dorothy exhibited in the Pennell Exhibitions aka the National Exhibition of Prints at the Library of Congress. So, we know that Dorothy was active as a printmaker at least by 1944.