Lou Halstead Jerome, watercolor, 10 by 13 inches, signed lower right.
Lou Halstead Jerome was an important early leader of the art community in Orlando. The Orlando Sentinel (October 19, 1930) said she was, “one of the foremost instigators of art development in Florida and particularly ‘The City Beautiful.’” Born in Brooklyn, New York, and educated at the Art Students’ League, she moved to Orlando in 1910, and, at the age of twenty, joined the Orlando Old Maids Club! Halstead opened the Concord Art Shop, a small art gallery and tea-room on the corner of Magnolia and Concord in Orlando, and began teaching art at Rollins College and Orlando’s Cathedral School for Girls. She was superintendent of the Art Department of the Central Florida, Sub-Tropical Mid-Winter Fair from 1919 to 1929. Jerome spent summers with her family in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts and was married there, in August 1921, to Henry C. Jerome, of Tulsa, Oklahoma. H. C. Jerome was a successful realtor in Orlando. In 1924 Lou Jerome worked with Ruby Warren Newby, then an instructor in art at Rollins College and later chairman of the Rollins art department, to organize the Orlando Art Association, with Jerome elected the first president. The Orlando Star carried the following comments by Jerome from her annual report, “If anyone had told me a year ago that at this time there would appear an editorial in one of our daily papers telling of plans of erecting a municipal building …with art room included, I don’t know what I would have said…It is the things we expect that we get.”
On April 27, 1927, Orlando and Gainesville women met at Lou Jerome’s home in Merritt Park, a suburb of Orlando, to found the Florida Federation of Art. Jerome recorded her sentiments in the minutes of the first meeting: “It is with a feeling of awe and trepidation that I report the meetings of The Florida Federation of Art; awe, because I feel so small a thing to put into words the beginnings of such a large and inspiring undertaking; and trepidation that I will be unable to carry over to you and to future members the atmosphere of inspiration and thrill of working out together, dreams and ideals for the State’s betterment in art education.”
Florida Federation of Art, first organizational meeting, Orlando and Winter Park, April 27, 1927 at home of Lou Halstead Jerome in Merritt Park. Pictured the executive board, back row left to right, Mrs. Lamoreau, Mrs. Keller, Miss Marsh, Mrs. Sears, Mr. Converse, Mrs. Thayer, Mrs. McTurk. Front row, Mrs. Jerome, Mrs. Converse, Miss Evans, Mrs. Newby, Mrs. Davidson, Mrs. Buchholz, Mrs. Marsh, Mr. Blake. Photograph courtesy of the George A. Smathers Libraries, Special and Area Collections, University of Florida. Florida Federation of Art Records.
Jerome and Mrs. C.C. Collier opened the Studio Art Shop in the Washington Street arcade in 1933, “to get together the work of local artists and further the sale of their work.”
When Jerome exhibited with the Gainesville Association of Fine Arts in 1934 the Gainesville Sun said, “Miss Jerome’s paintings are the kind that one can live with and are in almost every state in the Union. She recently sold one of her works to State Senator Hodges of Tallahassee. ‘Old Fashioned Window,’ which will be on exhibition, won the prize given by the Tampa Garden Club for the best flower garden subject at the Tampa show.”
Sometime in the early 1950’s Lu Jerome married Charles W. Tieman and began exhibiting as Lu Tieman. She maintained a studio in the downtown Arcade fronting Orange Avenue for over twenty years. Years later the Orlando Sentinel (January 12, 1969) in an article celebrating the 45th anniversary of the founding of the Orlando Art Association, quoted Mrs. Tieman, “These were exciting days. At first, we had exhibits in the basement of the new library, later moving to the chamber of commerce when the library needed our space.” For her there was never enough exhibition space, but in 1960 the Orlando Art Association and the City of Orlando found city-owned property between Lakes Estelle and Formosa for a new art center. The Art Association changed its name to the Lock Haven Art Center and later to the Orlando Museum of Art.
Lu Halstead Tieman lived to see art transformed in Orlando, from a small tea-room art gallery on Magnolia in downtown Orlando, to making history at the Albertson Library with the founding of the Orlando Art Association and the Florida Federation of Art, to the construction of what now is the Orlando Museum of Art in Lock Haven Park. She died in Orlando, age 91, January 28, 1982.
Lu Halstead Jerome, oil on board, 6 1/2 by 9 3/4 inches, signed lower right.
Born: August 6, 1890, Brooklyn, New York. Died: January 28, 1982, Orlando, Florida. Education: Art Students’ League with George Bridgeman; Pratt Institute, Brooklyn; Grand Central School of Art in New York with Edmund Greacen and Howard L. Hildebrandt; Chautauqua Art School; Berkshire Summer School of Art. Membership: Orlando Art Association; Florida Federation of Art; Southern States Art League; Allied Artists. Exhibits: Students’ Art Club, Exhibit of Florida Art, Tampa Public Library, May 2- May 9, 1922, Afternoon on a Florida River, A North Carolina Cottage, A Glimpse of A Sunny Field; Students’ Art Club, 2nd Annual Exhibit of Florida Art, Tampa Museum of Art, City Hall, March 12- March 19, 1923, Florida Oaks, The Portico of Arts and Crafts Building-Chautauqua- N.Y.; Tampa Art Institute 3rd Annual, City Hall, March 26, 1924, Florida and North Carolina scenes; Tampa Art Institute, 5th Annual, Tampa City Hall, March 1926, Reflections, Birch Trees; Orlando Art Association, at Chamber of Commerce, November 1928; Florida Federation of Art, 2nd Annual Convention, 1929, In The Garden, The Azalea Garden, Portrait of Miss Vee; Florida Federation of Art, 1930; Orlando Art Association at Orlando Chamber of Commerce, October 1930, one man exhibit of oils, watercolors, miniatures and silhouettes, including a portrait, Miss K. D. Warlow, Blue Scarf, Pensive Mood, Flame Vine, Glimpse of the Connecticut River, Nasturtiums, The Blue Vase; Orlando Art Association, at Chamber of Commerce, November 1930, silhouettes and Portrait of Ashton Jerome; Florida Federation of Art, Annual Circuit; Tampa Art Institute, Municipal Auditorium, Tampa, January 1931, A Gold Star Mother, Azalea Path; Florida Federation of Art, annual circuit, 1932, honorable mention for Mother’s Tea Gown; Orlando Art Association, Chamber of Commerce, February 1933, 2nd prize after Hugh McKeans 1st prize for The Colored Preacher; Gainesville Association of Fine Arts, new studio, 131 Union Street, Gainesville, February 9, 1934; Florida State Fair, Tampa, November 1935, Friendly Hills; Orlando Art Association, Orlando Chamber of Commerce, January 1938; Orlando Art Association, Municipal Auditorium, March 1948. Now exhibiting as Lu Tieman, Art-O-thon, Lake Eola, November 4, 1955; Albertson Public Library, September 1957, joint exhibit with Leila Aulls, paintings of Entrance to Orlando Country Club, Orlando Courthouse, St. Luke’s Church, Hattie Hudson Home, Grave of Orlando Reeves; Lock Haven Little Gallery, September 1962; Orlando Art Association at Lock Haven Gallery, May 1963, Lets Go Fishing; American Federal Savings & Loan, June 1965; Lock Haven Art Center, April 1972, Lu Tieman Paintings & Members Show; Holiday House Restaurant, Aloma Shipping Center, August 1974, one man exhibit; Directories: Listed in Orlando City Directory, 1915, as Miss Lucretia Halstead, at 11 Grace; Orlando City Directory, 1921, as Lucretia Fay Halstead, Teacher of Arts, Rollins College, residence Orlando; Orlando City Directory, 1955 as Lucretia Halstead Tieman, Studio Art Shop, 625 East Livingston Ave.
