Nan S. Wood

Landscape painter Nan Wood, daughter of Susannah Keifer and John Williams Stoddard, president of the Stoddard Manufacturing Company, was born February 11, 1872, in Dayton, Ohio, where she grew up. Her art studies were spread over a number of yearswith Andre Lhote in Paris in 1927 and 1932; the Art Students League; and in East Gloucester, Massachusetts with Hugh Breckenridge.

She painted in New England, Europe, Tahiti, and the Southwest, including flowers and Native Americans. Some specific paintings include San Xavier Mission; Hopi Snake Dance; Canyon de Chelly; Spring in Arizona; Buttes in Salt River Valley; Arizona Ranch; Greasewood in the Catalinas; and Church at Oracle.

In 1894, the artist married Charles Morgan Wood, who became widely known as a manufacturer and authority on the Apache Indians. After living in Dayton for a number of years, and from 1920-1923 in Ipswich and Boston, Massachusetts, she moved to Arizona because of her husband's health, first in Phoenix, then Tucson.

When he died in 1927, she spent summers for many years in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and winters in Tucson. She also traveled to Europe, Morocco, and Mexico. In 1956, she moved to New York.

Wood was a charter member of the Palette and Brush Club, in Tucson, exhibiting there for nearly thirty years from the later 1920s until she left Tucson. She exhibited in other Tucson venues like the Tucson Fine Arts Association; Santa Rita Hotel; University of Arizona; and Arizona State Museum; as well as the North Shore Art Association, Gloucester, Massachusetts; Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe; Arizona State Fair, Phoenix; and Denver Art Museum, Colorado. The Dayton Art Institute, Ohio, has Wood's Papago Indian Woman, in its collection.

Nan Wood died February 4, 1961 in Southampton, New York.

References to her life and work include: Who Was Who in American Art; Who's Who in American Art 1953; Petteys; Tucson Daily Citizen, 6 Feb 1927; Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), 19 Feb 1928, 18 Oct 1928, 2 Oct 1932, 21 Feb 1934, 7 Feb 1937; 4 Feb 1940, 6 Feb 1961; US Census 1900, Montgomery County, OH, ED 48, pg 9; Boston City Directory; Dayton City Directory; S. Armory (daughter), 1975, 1976; N. R. Horlacher (Dayton & Montgomery County Public Libraries), 1990.

Source:

Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki Kovinick, "An Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West"

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