Katharine Merrill, Jungle Monarch, oil on canvas, 19 by 23 and 3/4 inches.
Katharine Merrill originally had a studio in New York City where she taught at the Art Students League and the New York Collegiate School for Girls. A talented painter and etcher, Merrill moved to Sarasota in 1935, and in 1938, was listed in Who’s Who in Amercian Art. Moving to Bradenton in January 1940, she had a house warming for her new studio, Riverbye, located at 1331 Second Avenue. Prominent artists from the Gulf Coast attended. Merrill moved again to Lakeland, teaching art briefly at Southern College, before returning to Sarasota in 1946, and to Tampa in 1950. She was a highly visible and respected professional artist with an international reputation. Her painting, Myakka Oaks, won the gold medal of the Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs, and first prize as best Florida subject, Florida Federation of Art, 1938. The painting was chosen to represent Florida in a nationwide exhibition to include two paintings from each state.
Ralph McKelvey reviewed Merrill’s work exhibited at the Ringling Museum in the Sarasota Herald, February 19, 1939, “Katharine Merrill’s circus painting No. 23 entitled ‘The Gay Way,’ centers the wide north panel, a true exposition of the Sarasota scene. Circus wagons are lined up in winter quarters, and in the open field, zebras and a camel are grazing. Pictorially interesting, with the scene laid beneath a happily rendered sky, the opus is sure of public appreciation. But to the artist, Miss Merrill is at her best in the smaller canvas, No. 23, ‘Myakka Oaks.’ Opposing her heavy foreground oaks, gnarled trees of the species most common in Florida, against a delicately rendered distance, she gives as true a sense of the edge of the jungle skirting the open Myakka meadows as has yet been attained by the many painters who have worked in this inviting artists’ paradise.”
Glenn Tilley Morse, a leader of the Sarasota Art Association had this to say of Merrill’s work in the March 5, 1940, Sarasota Herald, “Miss Merrill is an etcher of national reputation and a large group of her etchings bear evidence of how worthy she is of fame in that branch of art. The scenes are from many foreign countries as well as America. What is very unusual in the paintings is that they are not merely colored drawings; they are painted with the skill of a good painter. Her portraits have character and charm. Each figure in her group has individuality. Her landscapes express a personal sympathy with nature. The lights and shadows and the layers of atmospheric distance sigh with the poetry in the artist’s soul. They recall… that the ancients called painting speechless poetry and poetry speaking pictures. Miss Merrill’s personality breathes through her pictures.” Katharine Merrill won a total of nine first prizes when exhibiting with the Florida Federation of Art.
Born: Milwaukee.
Education: Art Institute of Chicago; with Frank Duveneck; William Merritt Chase; Will Low; Albert Herter; London with Frank Brangwyn, 1908; France; Spain.
Membership: Sarasota Art Association, president, 1937; Blue Dome Fellowship; Clearwater Art Club; Florida Federation of Art; Brooklyn Society of Etchers, vice-president; Charter Member, New York, Brooklyn, Chicago Society of Etchers; California Society of Etchers; National Association of Women Painters & Sculptors; American Women’s Association; Florida Gulf Coast Artist Group.
Exhibits: Florida Federation of Art, 9th Annual Exhibit, Tampa, November 1935, honorable mention, etching, professional; Florida Federation of Art, 1936, 1st prize, etching; Blue Dome Fellowship, Annual Exhibition, Miami Beach Library and Art Center, January 1937; Sarasota Art Association, February 1937, etchings, Pyrenean Hills, Northern Spring, oils, Guarded Harbor on the Mediterranean, Florida Spring; Art League of Manatee County, Bradenton Woman’s Club, April 2, 1937, Florida Spring, Zinnias, six etchings; Art League of Manatee County, one woman exhibit, November 1937, etchings; Florida Federation of Art, 11th Annual Exhibition, St. Augustine, December 2-5, 1937, etchings, Mediterranean Fishing Port, Caste Nou-A Pass in the Pyrenees; Federal Art Galleries, St. Petersburg, January 1938, oil paintings and etchings; Sarasota Art Association, Artists and Models Exhibit, John Ringling Hotel, Sarasota, January 1938; Sarasota Art Association, 10th Annual, March 1938; Florida Federation of Art, All Florida Show, Palm Beach, April 1938, Jungle Monarch; Society of The Four Arts, December, 1938, best Florida subject, Miami Woman’s Club Award, Myakka Jungle; Art League of Manatee County, 3rd Annual, Memorial Pier, Bradenton, February 8-22, 1939, oils, Green Sweater, Chrysanthemums, Myakka Oaks; Sarasota Art Association, Ringling Museum of Art, February 1939, honorable mention, etching of circus scene, Rococo Challenge (Purchased by Henry Ringling North); Sarasota Art Association, Florida Theater building, March-April 1939; Sarasota Art Association, Cain Building, Orange Avenue, Art in Our Town, December 1939; Florida Art Project, WPA, statewide exhibition, 1939-1940; New York World’s Fair, International Business Machines, Galleries of Science and Art, 1940, Myakka Jungle; Golden Gate International Exposition, Myakka Jungle-No. 5; Bradenton Woman’s Club Exhibit, March 1939; Art League of Manatee County, 4th Annual, Memorial Pier, Bradenton, February 18-March 2, 1940, oils, Zinnias, Florida Spring, Sun Crowned, Goblin Wood, Phlox, Pyrenean Marketing; Sarasota Art Association, 10th Annual, March 1940, Florida, (Myakka Jungle with Satyr emerging from roots of giant trees.) Belle,(Portrait of a Negro woman); Florida Federation of Art, Annual Circuit, 1940, Winter Quarters; Clearwater Art Museum April 22-May 5, 1941, Deep Water, Seven Sisters, Seminole Village, Myakka Morning; Clearwater Art Museum, Gulf Coast Artists Group, Annual Circuit, 1942, Seminole Village, Portrait of Bee LaPenna; Sarasota Art Association, February 1943, portrait, The Rev. E. J. Maginn, Path Through the Hammock, Florida Sunset and Blue; Florida Federation of Art, Circuited Exhibit, April 1942, Delphinium and Rose; Florida Federation of Art, 16th Annual, St. Petersburg, December 1943, honorable mention, Maxwell Cook; Florida Gulf Coast Artists Group, nation wide circuit, Miami to Wisconsin, Newark, San Francisco, Syracuse, 1944, Circus Wagons, Edge of The Jungle; Clearwater Art Museum, Florida Gulf Coast Artist Group, 4th Annual, The Gleam, exhibit toured the state, 1944-1945; Florida Gulf Coast Group, 4th Annual Exhibition, nation wide circuit, July 1945-May 1946, Sarasota Circus, The Gleam; Florida Federation of Art, 19th Annual Exhibition, Miami Beach, December 1945, Beatrice of Bradenton, Golden Afternoons; Exhibit 12 Florida Artists, Deep Water, Seven Sisters, Seminole Village, Myakka Morning; Selected for Florida Federation of Art, Annual Circuit, 1946; Florida Gulf Coast Group, Clearwater Art Museum, 5th Annual, nation wide circuit, July 1946-May 1947, oils, French Fort and Fishers, The Castle Pyrenees; Florida Gulf Coast Group, Clearwater Art Museum, 6th Annual, nation wide circuit, July 1947-May 1948, The Pool; Florida Gulf Coast Group, sponsorship, Clearwater Art Museum, 7th Annual nation wide circuit, July 1948 to May 1949, etchings, Harper’s Ferry, Porgy’s Wharf-Charleston; Florida Gulf Coast Group, 8th Annual Exhibition, Clearwater Art Museum, on nation wide circuit, July 1949 to May 1950, watercolor, Aurora; Jacksonville WPA Art Center, April 1950, Seminole Indian; Guild of Christ the King, Catholic Church, Coffee & Art Show, 1952; University of Tampa & Tampa Art Institute, at Municipal Museum, 1956; Bradenton Art Center, Member’s Show, November 1958; Batell Gallery, Tampa Art Institute, April 1960; National Museum, Smithsonian Institute, Division of Graphic Arts, one woman show (etchings); Paris Salon; Palm Beach Art League; Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.; New York Public Library; Art Institute of Chicago; Milwaukee Art Institute; Newark Public Library; Beloit College Gallery; Bibliothegue Nationale; Metropolitan Museum; Widener Memorial Library; Mural, New York Botanical Gardens; New York World’s Fair; International Exhibitions in London, Florence, Venice; National Academy of Design; Represented in Library of Congress; New York Public Library; Art Institute of Chicago; Newark Public Library; Springfield Public Library.
Directory: Listed in the Sarasota City Directory, 1936, 1938, as an artist with a studio at 210 McAnsh Square. Listed in the Tampa City Directory from 1950 to 1960 as an artist with a studio at 3011 DeLeon.
