With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Cornelia Cowles Vetter
Painting/Drawing
1881 – 1959
An important woman in the early 20th century Hartford artist colony, and later a WPA artist.
- Biography/Description of Work
In 1898, Cowles attended Pratt Institute in New York City, and in 1907 enrolled at the New York School of Art under Robert Henri. In 1909, she and a group of forty fellow women students started the Henri School of Art to paint the scenes of gritty daily urban life as part of the Ashcan School movement. She married a Hartford business owner, Martin Vetter, in 1913 and the couple built a home on Linman Street and later moved to Huntington Avenue where she had a studio. She helped found the Artists’ Club in Hartford in 1919 and was a member of the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts where she exhibited. She was also instrumental in establishing the Hartford Society of Women Painters in 1928. After her husband died in 1933, she completed a mural for Hartford Juvenile Court and easel commissions for the WPA, which were distributed to a number of schools throughout Hartford, New Haven and Middlesex County. Vetter continued to paint through the 1940s, and moved in with her daughter in 1945, first in Cheshire and later in Essex. An oil painting, Haddam Looking East, is in the collection of the Connecticut River Museum in Essex.
- Sources view
- http://wpa.cslib.org/index.php/613/vetter-cornelia/ CT River Museum, New Deal Art Along the River, 2015. https://ctstatelibrary.org/vetter-cornelia/
- Associated Resource(s)
- n/a