Catharine Carter Critcher

Catharine (sometimes Catherine) Carter Critcher (September 13, 1868 – June 11, 1964) was an American painter. A native of Westmoreland County, Virginia, she went on to become the only female member of the Taos Society of Artists.^[1]

Critcher was the daughter of judge John Critcher and Elizabeth "Lizzie" Thomasia Kennon (Whiting) Critcher; she was their fourth daughter, the youngest of five children.^[2][3] She grew up on the family plantation, Audley, in Oak Grove, Westmoreland County, Virginia, where she early showed an interest in equestrianism and painting.^[4] studied at both Cooper Union in New York City, for a year, with Eliphalet Andrews at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., and with Richard Emil Miller.^[4] She traveled to Paris in 1904, where she would spend many years.^[1] She studied at the Académie Julian under Charles Hoffbauer and Jean-Paul Laurens,^[4] and founded the Cours Critcher in 1905 in an attempt to aid American artists in gaining admission to French schools, an enterprise in which she had the assistance of Miller and Hoffbauer.^[1][4] To further make money she would act as tour guide for Americans visiting Europe during the summer months. She exhibited at the Paris Salon during her time in the city, and served as president of the American Women Painters in Paris.^[4]

In 1909 Critcher returned to the United States; from 1911 to 1917 she taught at her alma mater, the Corcoran, remaining there until 1919.^[4] In that year she founded another school, this time in Washington, called variously The School of Painting and Applied Arts^[1] or the Cricher School.^[4] This she ran until 1940, when she decided to devote herself to painting full time.^[1] In 1922 she began teaching with sculptor Clara Hill.^[4]

Critcher first went to Taos, New Mexico in 1920. She would return for many summers, and was quite taken with the town, saying, "no place could be more conducive of work. There are models galore and no phones."^[1] In 1924 the all-male Taos Society of Artists unanimously voted her in.^[1] She was pleased with the honor, writing to Powell Minnigerode, "You will be pleased, I know, to hear that a letter just rec’d from Mr. Couse informs me that I have been unanimously elected to active membership in the Taos Society of Artists. It is nice to be the first and only woman in it. I am feeling very good about it.^[5] It was said of her that she would return to Washington "with a wrinkled, deeply suntanned skin in the 1920s when that was not fashionable"^[1] She traveled widely in search of subjects, visiting the Laurentian Mountains of Canada, Mexico, and Gloucester, Massachusetts, and spending several summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts.^[4] She spent two months on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona in 1928.^[6]

Exhibits of Cricher's work were held in 1928, at the Women's University Club of Washington, D.C.; in 1938, at the Studio Guild of New York; in 1940 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art; and in 1949 at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown, Maryland.^[4] She was a member of numerous organizations, including the Society of Washington Artists, the Southern States Art League, and the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.^[4]

Critcher never married, although she was courted by John Mosby;^[2] she died in either Washington, D.C.,^[3] or Blackstone, Virginia,^[4] and is buried with her parents and sister Louisa at Ivy Hill Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia.^[2]

Crichter painted mainly portraits during her career, working in a traditional and realistic style.^[4] Two of her portraits are in the collection of the National Academy of Design, those of James Leal Greenleaf and Oscar E. Berninghaus.^[4] One of her Taos paintings, donated by Adolph Gottlieb, is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum.^[3] Other works are in the Museum of the Southwest and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art.^[7]

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