Archives of American Art

Oral history interview with Marcella Comès (Winslow)

Summary

Collection ID:
AAA.winslo82
Creators:
Winslow, Marcella Comès
Pennington, Estill Curtis
Dates:
1982 May 4
Languages:
English
.
Physical Description:
28 Pages
Transcript
Repository:

Scope and Contents

Scope and Contents
An interview with Marcella Comès (Winslow) conducted 1982 May 4, by Estill Curtis (Buck) Pennington, for the Archives of American Art, at Winslow's home in Washington, D.C.
Scope and Contents
Winslow speaks of her art training at the Carnegie School of Fine Arts and in Europe; her first portrait commission; her first exhibitions in Pittsburgh, Pa.; her marriage to William Randolph Winslow and their relocation to Washington, D.C.; the Corcoran Gallery, the Phillips Gallery and the arts community in Washington, D.C., and exhibitions available in the 1940s and 1950s; the many Southern writers she painted and the Southern literary renaissance; her studio in Georgetown and how she came to live and work there and in New Hampshire; painting people realistically, and their reactions to that realism as they get older; her work with Artists' Equity in Washington, D.C.; exhibiting in local galleries; the Whyte Gallery, the Obelisk, and the Bader Gallery, the Henri Gallery, and Jefferson Place; changing styles to cubism and abstraction from realism, and how cultural mood dictates artistic styles; her various interests outside of painting, including her garden, her grandchildren, and her house; and the changes in Washington, D.C., and Georgetown in particular, over the years that she has lived there. Ms. Winslow speaks in great detail about the people whose portraits she painted, including: Monsignor Francis Spellman; her mother-in-law, writer Anne Goodwin Winslow; Allen Tate, who introduced her to many of the writers she subsequently painted; Tate's wife Caroline Gordon; John Crowe Ransom; John Peale Bishop; Robert Penn Warren; Katherine Anne Porter; Ezra Pound; Robert Lowell; Eudora Welty; Karl Shapiro; Leonie Adams; Elizabeth Bishop; Mark van Doren; Denis Devlin; Juan Ramon Jimenez; Katherine Chapin Biddle; Robert Frost; Richard Eberhart; Joanna Sturm; and Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Ms. Winslow also recalls Homer Saint-Gaudens, Robert Franklin (Bob) Gates, Margaret Casey Gates, William (Bill) Calfee, Sarah Baker, Bernice Cross, Mitchell Jamieson, Herman Williams, Bill Walton, and others.

Biographical / Historical

Biographical / Historical
Marcella Comès (Winslow) (1905-2000) was a portrait painter, photographer of Washington, D.C. Known also as Marcella Comès and Marcella Rodange Comès.

Administration

Sponsor
Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.
Existence and Location of Copies
Transcript is available on the Archives of American Art's website.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.

Digital Content


Using the Collection

Conditions Governing Access
Access to the entire recording is restricted. Contact Reference Services for more information.

More Information

General

General
Originally recorded on 1 sound cassette. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hr., 17 min.


Keywords

Keywords table of terms and types.
Keyword Terms Keyword Types
Portrait painters -- Washington (D.C.) Occupation Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Photographers -- Washington (D.C.) Occupation Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Women artists Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Sound recordings Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Interviews Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Women painters Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Women photographers Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid

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