Martha Watson Sauer, Side Street, Key West, January 1939, watercolor, 13.5 by 18.5 inches with WPA, Florida Art Project exhibit label on verso. Signed lower left.
Martha Watson was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and educated in Philadelphia. She moved to Key West in 1936, teaching watercolor painting at the Key West Art Center. Watson spent the winter season in Key West and summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The Key West Citizen, November 19, 1941, covered one of her exhibits, “Miss Watson, who has made her home in this city for a number of years, selected for the show a variety of impressions from Key West, Savannah and Provincetown, the local paintings depicting Fleming Studio, a Key West Lane, and a Key West Street. A Savannah Evening News critic declared: ‘Miss Watson paints like an impressionist, with keen interest in the rendering of light and all the variations of color created by its vibrations. Her paintings give a swift vivid impression of radiant color everywhere, no matter how humble the scene. The paintings of Key West are in still another mood and it is interesting to note the different effect achieved by this artist, who obtains in these scenes a quieter harmony of color.”
During World War II, as an employee at the Key West Naval Station, Watson painted murals for the Waves Barracks, (Later the Naval Hospital) and at Fort Taylor Officer’s Club. She illustrated a booklet, Coming Aboard, issued by the Navy to new civilian employees. In 1945 Watson married an attorney, Robert F. Sauer, and moved to Miami, returning often to Key West.
In February 1958, the Key West Art and Historical Society sponsored a month-long exhibit of her paintings at the East Martello Gallery. The Key West Citizen covered the formal reception and opening of her exhibit, February 28, 1958, “Sprite-like, sparkling, twinkling Martha Watson Sauer ran up a near record for attendance of art lovers and friends at her Wednesday evening formal reception, which marked the opening of her one-man watercolor show at East Martello Gallery and Museum. Hawaiian torches lit the interior garden and dance music from the Junior Assembly bathed the inner casements of the old fort, a fitting setting for a charming young lady and her sprightly paintings…Sauer said, ‘My aim is to transmit to paper the delights of nature out-of-doors, the sun’s heat and the deep cool of shadows. My paintings are not puzzles. I like what I see and try my best to present the scene so that others may share in the enjoyment of it.”
Martha Watson Sauer, Tropical Landscape, watercolor, 14.5 by 19 inches. Signed lower left, Martha Watson.
The Citizen continued March 2, 1958, “Martha Sauer has been a Key Wester for twenty-two years, having come to South Florida in 1936. She sees the Key West scene sans much of the dirt and confusion that more recent newcomers are so violent about. Most of these Key West paintings are without the dust, the grind of sand, the litter of tropical foliage and men’s hands and feet. It is a cleaned up, spic and span Key West, Mrs. Sauer gives us in her ‘House on Eaton Street,’ her ‘Three in a Row,’ her ‘On Truman Avenue.’ But the paintings are valuable for their interpretation of Key West way of life, architecture, foliage, and people. The banyan tree in ‘On Hutchinson Lane’ with its house in shadow, then other houses in background sharp sun, is as valuable to the viewer, who prefers to take away the particular memory of this time and place, as if the foreground had but recently been swept clean…Mrs. Sauer loves the galleried old houses of Key West, the propped up roofs and the railings, and gives her vivid impressions of these, letting the viewer fill in the rest of the detail…It is the overall effect, with her vivid consciousness of color variation that makes Mrs. Sauer’s work impelling and inviting.” In November of 2003, now 91, Sauer was honored by the Key West Museum of Art and History, with a 50-year retrospective exhibit, Travels with My Paint Box.
The Miami Herald, November 15, 2003 quotes Watson on how she came to Key West: “My mother and I stopped by accident in a travel agency in Miami. We saw these watercolors by (FERA artist) Avery Johnson with scenes of Key West. It was such a dear little town. So, I said, ‘Let’s go to Key West’ and we did.”
Born: 1912. Died: 2006. Education: with F. Townsend Morgan in Key West; Cape Cod School of Art, Provincetown; with Henry Hensche; with watercolorist James Kirk Merrick in Philadelphia. Membership: Key West Art Association; Key West Society of Artists; Miami Art League; Florida Federation of Art. Exhibits: Key West Art Association, 1st Exhibit, February 1938, watercolor, Key West; Key West Art Association, March 1938, Summer Sunlight; Florida Art Project, WPA, statewide exhibition, 1939-1940; Key West Society of Artists, 3rd Annual Outdoor Exhibit, February 1941, Casa Marina Hotel; Georgia Metropolitan Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, November 1941; Miami Beach Art Center, Christmas 1941, Fourteen Key West Artists; Miami Boat Show at Municipal auditorium, Bayfront Park, March 1947, Walter Walters Prize, Cargo For Antwerp; Poinciana Festival, Miami, 1947, 1st prize landscape; Miami Art League, Miami Beach Art Center, November 1948; Miami Beach Community Art Center, February 1949; Pan American art exhibit, Miami Beach Art Gallery, April 1949, best watercolor, Prado No. One Havana Cuba; Key West Woman’s Club, March-April 1949, watercolors; Key West Woman’s Club, January 1950, scenes of Haiti; Coconut Harvest Festival, sponsored by Miami Art League, Crandon Park, May 7, 1950, At Crandon Park; East Martello Museum and Art Gallery, watercolor landscapes of Key West, Cuba, Jamaica, February-March 1958, The Perez Grocery, Storm Coming, Montego Bay, Market in Montego Bay, Bend at Frenchman’s Creek, At Boston Bay, On Mt. Diablo, Country Side, Road to Bubbling Springs, Near Hope Bay; Key West Art and Historical Society, Members’ Art Show, East Martello Gallery and Museum, April 1958, Garden District, New Orleans”, “Vegetable Man”; Miami Art League, several honorable mentions; Provincetown Art Association; Wilmington Society of Artists; Telfair Gallery, Savannah.
