YVONNE TWINING HUMBER

Born Frances Yvonne Twining on Decmber 5, 1907 in New York City to Harry Esmond Twining, a businessman and gifted amateur watercolorist, and Emma Potts Twining, a Classical musician who sang with the Paris Grand Opera. Living in Europe until the death of her father in 1917, she and her mother returned to their hometown, South Egremont, MA. where she received her first art instruction from neighbors Charles and Katherine Almond Hulbert, well-known American Impressionists. She then studied at the National Academy Of Design in N.Y. from 1925 to 1931, the Art Students League, 1928-1931 and with Charles Hawthorne at Provincetown, MA from 1928-1930.

In addition to her own artistic accomplishments, she endowed the Twining-Humber Award for Lifetime Achievement through Seattle’s Artist Trust. The award gives an annual $10,000. prize to a Washington State female artist over the age of 60 who has dedicated a substantial portion of her life to art. She understood the challenges most women artists face in pursuing their art in balance with family and societal expectations and she wanted to see those achievements acknowledged and celebrated.

Her work is included in the following publications;

An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the West by P & M. Kovinick, University of Texas Press, 1998

Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, edited by P. Trenton, University of California Press, 1995

Yvonne Twining Humber: An Artist Of The Depression Era, feature article in Woman's Art Journal, Fall/Winter 1996, Volume 16, #2.

The Pacific Northwest Landscape, A Painted History by Kitty Harmon, Sasquatch Press.

An Enduring Legacy: Women Painters of Washington, 1930-2005, by David F. Martin, Whatcom Museum of History & Art, UW Press, 2005.

Painting used as front cover of book.

What It Meant To Be Modern:Seattle Art at Mid-Century, by Sheryl Conkelton, Henry Art Gallery, 2000

IMAGE AND TEXT ReproductIon prohibited without permission of the gallery.

In 1933 and 34, she won two consecutive Tiffany Foundation Fellowships at Oyster Bay, Long Island, N.Y. where she worked with fellow artists Luigi Luccioni, Paul Cadmus and Edna Reindel who exposed her to the influences of the early Italian Renaissance painters, resulting in a stylistic change away from Impressionism to the hard-edged formalist realism for which she would become known. When the government sponsored Public Works of Art Project began in 1933, she was employed as an easel painter until the program ended and was replaced by the Works Progress Administartion. In order to participate in this program, she needed to return to her home state of Massachusetts.

From 1935 to 1943 she was employed by the WPA as an easel painter in Boston, MA. It was during her period on the WPA that she established a national reputation for her remarkable urban subjects and rural landscapes. Her paintings were often singled out by critics who praised her unique, personal stylie and they were often reproduced in newspapers and art publications of the period.

Following her 1943 marriage to Irving Humber, she relocated to Seattle where Mr. Humber owned a wholesale business. She quickly established herself in Seattle's art community, bringing with her an impressive East Coast reputation and a hard-edged urban realism that was an uncommon style in the Northwest.

She won numerous local awards and had two of her paintings were purchased by the Seattle Art Museum for their permanent collection after a very successful one-woman exhibition in 1946. That same year she won first prize in painting in a national competition of the National League of American Penwomen , held at the Smithsonian Institute.

Humber was sponsored into the Women Painters of Washington in 1945 by Co-Founder Myra Wiggins. She became President of the organization for the 1947-48 term and remained a lifelong member .

She was also a member of the Northwest Printmakers Society, Northwest Watercolor Society, National League of American Penwomen and was a Docent at the Seattle Art Museum for many years.

Her exhibition history includes Seattle Art Museum (solo exhibition, 1946), Henry Art Gallery, Worlds Fair, N.Y., 1939, Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington, D.C., Palace Of The Legion Of Honor, San Francisco, CA., Denver Art Museum, National Academy of Design, N.Y.and numerous other venues. In 1997/98 her painting "Back Street", 1940 was hung in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC to commemorate her 90th birthday Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Seattle Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Seattle University Collection, Library Of Congress, Fitchburg Art Museum, Fleming Art Museum , Oklahoma City Art Museum, Wolfsonian Institution, The Robert McLaughlan Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario, and numerous other public and private collections.

CASCADES, 1944, OIL ON BOARD, 16 x 20

UNTITLED STILL LIFE, OIL ON CANVAS, 26 x 22

INDIANS GAMBLING, 1946, SERIGRAPH,

MAGNOLIA VIEW, CIRCA 1948, TEMPERA ON PAPERBOARD 12 x 16

COUNTRY ROAD, 1933, OIL ON CANVAS, 16” X 20”

Home Page Yvonne Twining Humber Glen Alps Mid Century Modern Northwest Impressionism

Mary Randlett Ida York Abelman William Ashby McCloy Danny Pierce Tomkins & Fitzgerald Hans Jorgensen Abraham Lincoln Walker Guido Borghi WPA era Artwork African American Artists and Imagery Gallery Credentials

MARTIN-ZAMBITO FINE ART

YVONNE TWINING HUMBER

1907-2004