Virginia B. Evans

Virginia B. Evans (June 5, 1894-March 23, 1983) was a West Virginia visual artist and teacher.^[1] In the Ohio Valley region she became famous for her impressionist painting and art deco glass work.^[2]

Life and Career

Evans was born in Moundsville, West Virginia, the daughter of D. Barger Evans (1859-1945) and Mary Estelle Myers Evans (1869-1956).^[3] Her extensive education made Evans one of the best trained artists of her generation. In 1914, Evans graduated from Wheeling's Mount de Chantal Academy, before attending Pittsburgh's Carnegie Institute of Technology School of Fine Arts, and the Pennsylvania Academy for the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.^[4] In 1924, she received a fellowship to the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, which included a brief residency at Tiffany's Mansion, Laurelton Hall, on Oyster Bay, Long Island, where Evans worked with leading painters like Childe Hassam, Charles Webster Hawthorne, and Geri Melchers.^[5] From 1926 to 1931, Evans made four trips to Europe, including studying at the Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts in France during the summer of 1926.^[6]

Evans debuted her paintings in the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh's juried exhibits in 1923.^[7] During the late 1920s and early 1930s, paintings from her various European trips were exhibited in Wheeling, Pittsburgh, and New York City.^[8] Her paintings were widely displayed through the eastern U.S. during the 1930s.

In a time when women rarely traveled alone, Evans traveled through the eastern U.S. and northern Europe. In 1931, she made her fourth voyage across the Atlantic ocean, traveling as the sole passenger on a merchant freighter with thirty-four sailors. ^[8] She chose the slower merchant vessel rather than a passenger liner in order to "study the ocean." ^[8]

Evans exhibited in the 1933 exhibit "The American Scene" at the John Herron Institute (now Indianapolis Museum of Art)^[9] alongside artists Charles Davis, William Forsyth, Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry, Clifton Wheeler, and Zoltan Sepeshy.^[10]

Evans' career shifted in 1942 when the Imperial Glass Corporation hired her to design glass products for their new line. ^[11] Her Asian inspired designs included dragon and butterfly motifs, used on a line of more than thirty Imperial Cathay Crystal items ranging from candle holders to ashtrays.^[1]

Considered one of West Virginia's most foremost artists of the 20th century, Evans was deemed “one of the best trained and most gifted painters” in the region by a renowned national art columnist. She died in 1983 in Moundsville, West Virginia.^[12]

References