We are looking at women painters at the beginning of the 20th century, like Carrie Hill, whose art and work created a thriving art community in the industrial boom-town of Birmingham, Alabama. Their pioneering work would pave the way for the next generation of women artists in Birmingham, like Miriam, to have successful art careers.
Louise Schaefer Cone (1889-1968) is a well-known painter from Birmingham who was known not only for her portraiture of Southern figures and landscapes, but also for her work with the Birmingham Art Club and later the establishment of the Birmingham Museum of Art.
What is often overlooked by art historians is Mrs. Cone’s teaching influence on many generations of Birmingham artists in the 20th century. Miriam would take art classes from Mrs. Cone at her studio on Highland Avenue in Birmingham. Mrs. Cone taught Miriam by having her copy paintings and drawings. Beyond the act of replication, the real value of the lessons came from Cone’s studio itself. Housed in a spacious room on the third floor of an old house, the studio contained various objects, antiques, and numerous portraits, creating an immersive environment for a young artistic exploration.
Other well-known women artists in Birmingham like Hanna Elliott (1876-1956) and Edith Frohock (1917-1997) would also become key figures in forming a vibrant art community. Miriam took classes from Edith Frohock in the 1960s during Miriam’s abstract expressionist period.
We still have a few pieces like this landscape done in 1945 by Miriam in Mrs. Cone’s class when Miriam was 10. You can see Mrs. Cone’s impressionist influence in Miriam’s early work. By the time Miriam went to university in the 1950s, abstract expressionism had taken over teaching at the university art departments and it would be almost a decade before she returned to representational works.
