Susan Watkins (American, 1875–1913), Le Five O’Clock (Tea), ca. 1903, Oil on canvas, Mr. and Mrs. Edward T. Miles
By Jeff Maisey
Chances are you’ve never heard of American artist Susan Watkins.
You likely had no idea she lived on Duke Street in Norfolk, died at age 38, and is buried at Elmwood Cemetery.
Some surmise had she lived longer, Susan Watkins would have been revered in the same light as Georgia O’Keeffe.
This intriguing painter studied under Raphael Collin in Paris for nearly a decade. She excelled in both realism and impressionism works of art.
According to Wikipedia, Susan Watkins, independent by nature and financially, married successful businessman Goldsborough Serpell in 1912 in Norfolk. Within a year, she fell ill — cancer is speculated — and died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
When Serpell passed away in 1946, he left 62 of Watkins’ paintings to what is today the Chrysler Museum of Art.
The Chrysler, which has two of her works on permanent display, has opened up its storage and also sought works from private collections to present “Susan Watkins and Women Artists of the Progressive Era,” a classic exhibition running October 17 through January 11 in the Special Exhibitions Gallery.
The exhibition examines how women at the turn of the twentieth century overcame barriers and achieved success within the professional art world.
The Chrysler Museum of Art has presented two exhibition of Watkins work in the past: “Between Continents and Centuries: Susan Watkins, An American Artist Rediscovered” (1985) and “Gentle Modernist: The Art of Susan Watkins” (2003).
Corey Piper, the Brock Curator of American Art at the Chrysler Museum of Art, is well versed in the Watkins collection and curated the new exhibition.
I caught up with Piper to learn more about the fascinating Susan Watkins and her work.
Here’s an excerpt of our conversation.
VEER: Is there any significance to the date of this exhibition to the life of Susan Watkins?
Corey Piper: This is actually the 150th anniversary of her birth. She was born in 1875, though this isn’t the only reason the exhibition was mounted. It was another reason to stop and reevaluate her legacy.
There were just a few other things that led to the development and timing of this exhibition.
There is a growing interest in the field of American art and the contribution of women artists of this era, so I think it is part of a larger museum trend and that trying to look more broadly to find stories of artists who come from a more broad and diverse selection of artists who are out there.
It was also the result of several years of work on my part and other folks at the museum to re-dig into this great archive the Chrysler has dedicated to Susan Watkins’ history.
These are items, papers, and record books collected by Susan Watkins in her lifetime, and then donated with her artworks to the museum by her widower, Goldsborough Serpell.
VEER: Beyond the brief history of Susan Watkins’ life, art studies, travels, and personal relationships described on Wikipedia, what do we know of her time in Norfolk? What will visitors to the exhibition learn of her residence in Downton Norfolk?
Corey Piper: This exhibition is a national and international story, but its rooted in something unique and special to Norfolk.
The connection between Susan Watkins to Norfolk…it’s a little hard to pinpoint the origin of it.
She traveled to Norfolk a few times during her life. It was documented in newspapers on the society pages around the turn of the 20th century. If there was a high society party everyone who attended was listed.
So she’s showing up at these parties in the late 1890s. This was the first record I saw of her in Norfolk.
Then in 1903 she’s here again. In 1908 she’s at the wedding party for one of the Serpell family members.
At some point, she is Capri, Italy with Goldsborough Serpell, who was a Norfolk banker. So they knew each other for quite some time.
Finally, in 1911, their engagement was announced in the Norfolk newspapers, and they were married in 1912.
By this point she was probably quite ill. She had been suffering with a chronic health condition which was probably some form of cancer.
So they settled in Norfolk and were only married for about a year before she dies.
He continued to nurture her legacy. He moved into the Serpell family home that was built on Westover and Hampton Blvd (902 Westover Ave). It’s no longer there. It was demolished in the 1960s. It was a very grand modern home at the time with an elevator in it, the first private home in Norfolk to have one.
I heard stories of Serpell family members spending holidays at the house and seeing all the Susan Watkins paintings displayed. (The three-story home had 40 interior rooms).
Serpell is very protective of the legacy of Susan Watkins, so when he dies he bequeathed the collection of her art to the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences. That’s why there’s this fantastic collection at the museum.
That local element of the story where she spent time living there (in Norfolk)…this is the place where her work has been so well preserved for all these decades.
What the exhibition tells is the larger story of artists who are her peers — other women who aren’t so lucky to have their legacy and history so well preserved by a museum like the Chrysler.
It’s kind of unique to be able to tell the story of an artist of this generation working in this manner. The reason the museum can do it is because of the foresight of Goldsborough Serpell and the leaders of the museum over the decades.
Susan Watkins (American, 1875–1913), The 1830 Girl (Portrait of Miss M. P. in Louis Philippe Costume), 1900, Oil on canvas, Chrysler Museum of Art, Bequest of Goldsborough Serpell, 46.76.147
VEER: Will all of the Chrysler’s 62 paintings by Susan Watkins be included in the exhibition?
Corey Piper: Not 100 percent, just for reasons of space and topicality. There are also a lot of drawings that are quite unfinished.
I would say about 80 to 90 percent of the Serpell bequest will be on view, but then there’s also other works of Susan Watkins that are being leant by descendants of the Serpell family.
These are third and fourth generations of Goldsborough Serpell’s siblings. Those works have stayed within the family, which is also a unique story in the history of collecting of American art. I can’t think of many examples of families who so proudly to preserve that kind of legacy.
VEER: Given Susan Watkins medical condition, do we know if she painted while living in Norfolk?
Corey Piper: We don’t know is the short answer.
My guess is that she would not be painting. There are no known examples of painting landscapes and city scapes (of Norfolk). I think her health was quite poor at this time.
I will say there’s definitely evidence of her working to foster who own career. A lot of correspondence that we have that she’s working to place her work in exhibitions. She’s corresponding with publishers of art journals to try to reproduce her work. So she’s definitely functioning as a working artist while she’s in Norfolk, and I’m sure hoping to recover and continue her career. She’s taking good care to make sure she doesn’t lose touch with the professional art world.
VEER: Prior to living in Norfolk, Susan Watkins spent time as an artist in France and Italy. How did these experiences in Europe significantly shape her paintings?
Corey Piper: I’d say very significant if not fundamental to who she was as a professional artist.
You know it’s not really a quite story that she went to Europe to study art. Hundreds of women were traveling to Europe, and France in particular, during that era because there was a great expansion of opportunities for women to pursue a variety of professional fields.
In the fine arts there was a much greater opening for women to pursue careers as artists.
For any American artist, male or female, at this time, European study were the marker of achievement and stature as professional artists.
For Susan Watkins it was very important for her to spend time studying in what she and others though of as the capital of fine art at the time — in Paris.
There she attended a couple of private art academies, which are very popular with American students and are special to students throughout Europe as well.
The goal of completing that study was to show their work at important venues in Europe. For Susan Watkins the most important was the Paris Salon, which was the biggest to-do; the contemporary international exhibition of living artists.
Starting in 1899, she showed work every year at the Salon for 10 years.
So showing at the Paris Salon would attract the attention of the American art press, collectors, and patrons.
She would often send those works after their debut in Paris to other exhibitions in London and other parts of Europe. Then they would often come back to important American venues like the National Academy of Design or the Art Institute of Chicago.
VEER: Had her career lasted longer it is believed the art of Susan Watkins could have been on par with Georgia O’Keeffe in importance. Could Watkins artwork also rivaled the value of male painters of the late 1890s to early 1900s?
Corey Piper: Yeah, I think so.
What I hope the exhibition does is it tells the story about why some of these women, like Susan Watkins and the other women included in this exhibition, have been sort of left out of art history.
I read the Wikipedia article often and I don’t know if I agree with that characterization. I’m not sure who wrote that part of it.
The way that scholarship or the museum field has traditionally framed things. There’s room for one or maybe a handful of really singular female artists like Mary Cassatt or Georgia O’Keeffe, and they’re only really allowed a seat at the table because they’re so exceptional.
I try to tell a story in this exhibition that there’s really a large network of women who are engaged in these professional pursuits and during their lifetime they’re achieving great professional success. They’re showing alongside the male painters of the day.
I hope this exhibition poses the question, who are these other artists who’ve been left out and why can’t we have a more collective view of art history in how woman artists are more integrated and more involved in the professional art world of their day?
