A scrapbook, clippings (1911-1964), a photograph album, and photographs (1895-1918) illustrate life at the Eagle's Nest art colony.
Twenty-seven photographs and a photograph album document family events and Willson's summers with her uncle, painter Ralph Clarkson, at Eagle's Nest art colony in Oregon, Illinois (1895-1963). Subjects include costume pageants, artists' cabins, Rock River scenes, Taft's statue "Black Hawk", Willson with Clarkson, and artists Charles Francis Browne, J. Spencer Dickerson, Horace Spencer Fiske, Oliver Dennett Grover, and Loredo Taft. The album also contains 10 Christmas cards (1943-1963) and 12 clippings, including an obituary for Wallace Heckman (1927) and 4 articles about Mrs. Vernon Thomas (1928). A second scrapbook contains 49 picture postcards, primarily of Colorado scenes, and a clipping about Eagle's Nest (1911).
Provenance:
The Archives of American art retained copy prints of some of the photographs lent by Catharine Willson.
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.
Black and white photographs copied from original lantern slides and photographs include portraits of many colonists, the interiors and exteriors of their cabins and group pictures of costumed campers in pageants and processions.
Biographical / Historical:
Eagle's Nest Colony was established in 1897 as a summer home by a group of Chicago artists and writers led by Lorado Taft. Artists Ralph Clarkson, Nellie V. Walker, Charles Francis Browne, and Oliver Dennett Grover; writers Hamlin Garland and Henry Blake Fuller; poet Harriet Monroe, and architects Allen and Irving Pond were among the residents who shared 13 acres of forest on a Rock River bluff. The campers staged outdoor plays, lectured, and contributed paintings to exhibitions at the local library. Lorado Taft's "Black Hawk," a reinforced concrete sculpture, was a gift to the colony. Following Taft's death in 1936, their lease continued until the death of the last original signer, which was portrait artist Ralph Clarkson in 1942. The camp was acquired by Northern Illinois State Teachers College (now Northern Illinois University) in 1950.
Provenance:
Lent for microfilming 1987 by the Taft Branch Library, Northern Illinois University, Oregon, Illinois.
Restrictions:
The Archives of American art does not own the original papers. Use is limited to the microfilm copy.
