Charles Atherton Cumming correspondence

The collection consists of correspondence between Charles Atherton Cumming and various American artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. The letters form a collection from the time when Cumming’s widow gave the letters to a journalist for background information. The correspondence mainly details the decoration of the Iowa State Capitol which was overseen by the Iowa Capitol Commission, of which Cumming was a member. Other Commission members whose letters form part of the collection are Edith Bell, an artist and an instructor in the Department of Art at Iowa State University, A. B. Funk and E. P. Schoentgen Also discussed in the letters are sales of Cumming’s paintings and other artistic concerns. Included in the collection are letters from Frederick Dielman, a mosaicist whose work appear in the Library of Congress, discussing his work for the State Capitol in Des Moines. Correspondents also include Bert Greer Phillips, a member of the Taos art colony, whose work includes murals on the Polk County court house, the capitol in Jefferson, MO, and the courthouse in Taos, NM, and Russell Cowles, born in Iowa, but who worked in Santa Fe, NM for many years. Other correspondents include: Edwin H. Blashfield, an artists whose works are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota State Capitols, and the Library of Congress, amongst other places; Elmer E. Garnsey, also a decorator of the Iowa State Capitol, Charles W. Hudson, Will H. Low, W. A. Payne, and Douglas Volk.



Sources:

Falk, Peter Hastings, ed. Who was who in American Art. Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1985. Dawdy, Doris Ostrander. Artists of the American West. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1985.