Files related to Washington, D.C. art activities; photographs; scrapbook; and guestbook.
REELS 2424-2425: Scrapbook on Comès' sitters Leonie Adams, Elizabeth Bishop, Katherine Garrison Chapin, Martin D' Arcy, Walter de la Mare, Denis Devlin, Richard Eberhart, Robert Frost, Caroline Gordon, Ralph Hodgson, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Robert Lowell, Katherine Anne Porter, Ezra Pound, St. John Perse, Sir John Rothenstein, Karl Shapiro, Allen Tate, Mark Van Doren, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Cornelius Weygandt and Anne Goodwin Winslow, containing letters, clippings, book reviews, photos of sitters and Comès' portraits. Also included are photos of Comès and printed material relating to her.
REEL 2424, frames 3-243: A guest book, containing signatures, comments, sketches, photographs, clippings, and letters from artists, poets, writers, and other guests of Comès, including Walter de la Mare, Robert Frost, Leon Masson, Katherine Anne Porter, Sir John Rothenstein and Sir William Rothenstein, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, and others. Also included are photographs of Comès and her family.
UNMICROFILMED: Artist, dealer, institution, and subject files containing letters, exhibition catalogs and announcements, clippings, photographs, and other printed materials relating to Washington, D.C. art activities. Included are: files on artists Caroline Van Hook Bean, Ruby Grady, Jacob Kainen, Frank Wright, and others; files on the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Foundry, the Studio Gallery, and other galleries; subject files on the Art Barn, the D.C. chapter of the Artists Equity Association including membership lists and address labels, 1970-1972, the Art in the Embassies Program, the Conference on Artists and Taxes, 1977, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Society of Arts and Letters, the Federal Government and the art, including material on bills and hearings, 1973-1977, the Washington art community, women and the arts, art materials hazards, includes published works by Joy Luke Turner, and crafts.
Also included are a paper "Government Sponsorship of the Arts under the WPA and Ceta," by Martha Malles, 1978; clippings, with reviews by John Canady and others; photographs, undated and 1971-1973, of Marcella Comès, Art Barn happenings, including 45 slides, 1974, and Artists Equity Association, Washington chapter, exhibitions; a published reference directory of Washington art, WASHINGTON TODAY, 1967; and one 16mm amateur film circa 1974.
Biographical / Historical:
Portrait painter, photographer; Washington, D.C. b. 1905. d. July 6, 2000. Married name Mrs. Randolph Winslow. Trained at the Carnegie School of Fine Arts and privately in Europe. Comès played an active part in the local D.C. art community; as a member of the Women's Commission of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, president of the D.C. chapter of Artists Equity Association, 1969-1971, and as the national vice-president, 1971-1973. Comès was the ex-officio portraitist to the Poetry Chair at the Library of Congress.
Provenance:
Lent and donated 1982 by Marcella Comes.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm. Contact Reference Services for more information.
