Agnes Tait

Born in New York, NY in 1894 and died 1981 in Santa Fe, NM.

Born in Greenwich Village in New York City, Agnes Tait was a painter of landscapes, figures, portraits and decorative panels, as well as a print maker and children's book illustrator. Her style was romantic realist, with some of her works being allegorical. Book illustrations include Heidi in 1947 and Paco's Miracle in 1961.

From the age of fourteen, she studied intermittently for ten years (1908-1918) at the National Academy of Design in New York City with Charles Hinton, Francis Jones, and Leon Kroll.

In 1930, she received a grant from the United Fruit Company to paint tropical scenes and portraits of natives in Jamaica and Haiti, and in 1932, she painted a series of portraits commissioned by Florenz Ziegfeld of his Follies girls.

Tait was an active WPA (Federal Arts Project) artist in the 1930s, and in this capacity, painted murals including one in 1936 for the Psychiatric Building at Belleview Hospital in New York and in the 1950s for the U.S. Post at Laurinburg, North Carolina. In the 1950s, she painted an historical-themed mural for the First National Bank of Santa Fe (1953).

She married journalist William Mc Nulty in 1933, and in 1941, moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico where she died in 1981. Her existence there was both productive and restless. When she was in residence, she did book illustrations and painted many commissioned portraits as well as cat studies, landscapes, and scenes with adobes and churches. She moved thirteen times within the city during the 40 years she lived there. She also traveled extensively, staying in Fort Worth, Texas from 1942 to 1943; and spending time in Europe, Mexico, and other parts of the United States.

Tait was a member and exhibitor in 1936 of the National Association of Women, a seven-time exhibitor at the Art Institute of Chicago between 1915 and 1936, an exhibitor in three annual exhibitions of the Pennsylvania Academy, and in four annual exhibitions of the National Academy of Design. Other exhibition venues were the New York World's Fair in 1939, Weyhe Gallery, New York City in 1973 and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1976.

Source:

Paul Sternberg Sr., Art by American Women

Jules and Nancy Heller, North American Women Artists of the 20th Century

Marion and Phil Kovinick, Women Artists of the American West

Peter Hastings Falk (ed.), Who Was Who in American Art

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