This article is in essence a chapter of a book in progress on the familial relationships between the Schindler and Weston families, from their separate Chicago years through their bohemian social circles in Los Angeles and Carmel in the 1920s and 1930s. For now I plan to end the book in 1938 when Weston married Charis Wilson and built his home in Carmel Highlands and the Schindlers divorced and began living separate lives under the same roof in their iconic RMS-designed Kings Road House. My working title for the book is The Schindlers and the Westons: An Avant-Garde Friendship. Their fascinatingly interwoven lives and relationships remained avant-garde to the end. As always, I welcome your feedback on any of my pieces.
(Click on images to enlarge)
Taos Pueblo, October 1915. Photograph by R. M. Schindler. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
R. M. Schindler in Taos, 1915. Photographer possibly Victor Higgins. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
Longtime Edward Weston friend R. M. Schindler "discovered" Taos Pueblo, New Mexico a full two years before the now legendary dowager of Taos, Mabel Dodge Luhan and seven years before the arrival of her muse D. H. Lawrence. Schindler's images (see above for example) taken on the last leg of his fateful 1915 six-week sojourn to the West Coast to view the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and Panama-California Exposition in San Diego provided inspiration for his earliest Southern California work beginning with his now iconic personal residence on Kings Road in West Hollywood on which he began design in late 1921. The Pueblo influence most compellingly continued on Schindler's 1922 Popenoe Cabin in Coachella, a commission most likely obtained through his mutual friendship with Edward Weston's close friend Johan Hagemeyer, and his 1923 El Pueblo Ribera Court in La Jolla.
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Schindler-Chace House, 835 Kings Road, 1922. R. M. Schindler, architect. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
Popenoe Cabin, Coachella Valley, 1922. R. M. Schindler, architect. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
El Pueblo Ribera Court, La Jolla, 1923. R. M. Schindler, architect. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
In another letter to Neutra shortly after his December 1920 move to Los Angeles to supervise construction of Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House for Aline Barnsdall, Schindler wrote of his impressions of the vernacular architecture of Taos Pueblo,
"When I speak of American architecture I must say at once that there is none. . .The only buildings which testify to the deep feeling for soil on which they stand are the sun-baked adobe buildings of the first immigrants and their successors — Spanish and Mexican — in the south-western part of the country." (Letter from RMS to Richard Neutra, Los Angeles, California, ca. January, 1921: quoted in E. McCoy, Vienna to Los Angeles: Two Journeys (Santa Monica, Arts & Architecture Press,1979), p.129).
While in San Diego and Los Angeles before leaving for Taos, Schindler also sought out the work of Irving Gill. Schindler knew by then through his fateful December 1914 introductory meeting with Frank Lloyd Wright and his son John that Gill had worked with Wright in the offices of Adler & Sullivan during the design of the Transportation Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Recently having returned from Southern California himself, John had lived in a Gill-designed cottage in San Diego with brother Lloyd. Schindler had been regaled with stories of American architecture and Sullivan's work by his mentor Adolf Loos before moving to Chicago from Vienna in 1914. (See my "R. M. Schindler, Richard Neutra and Louis Sullivan's "Kindergarten Chats" for more details).
Thus it was possibly in San Diego or more likely Los Angeles that Schindler first learned of Gill's perfection of the Aiken System tilt-slab concrete construction techniques for which he had acquired the patents. Schindler and his builder-partner Clyde Chace later employed a simpler modified tilt-slab method, using some of Gill's own equipment, in the construction of their Pueblo-inspired residence in 1922 (see below). They built the house on a lot purchased from Walter Dodge just down the street from Gill's Dodge House which RMS more than likely observed under construction during his 1915 Los Angeles stopover. (For more on this see my "Sarah B. Clark Residence, 7231 Hillside Ave., Hollywood: Irving Gill's First Aiken System Project").
Schindler Residence, 835 Kings Road, West Hollywood. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
Akin to the process used in forming and curing the indigenous organic straw-reinforced clay adobe bricks in Taos, forms for encasing the the steel mesh-reinforced concrete wall slabs for Kings Road were also supported by the construction site's floor slabs during the curing process (see above).
"Doc" Martin, and unidentified child, Taos, November 1915. R. M. Schindler photo. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
Victor Higgins in his studio, Taos, ca. 1920. From New Mexico's Digital Collections.
RMS's side trip to Taos was prompted by a letter he received from Chicago friend and fellow Palette and Chisel Club member Victor Higgins (see above) where he was on location in Taos the previous July. His letter read in part, "Taos is a very fine place - the layout of the pueblos - and one of the most Indian in character. The pueblo runs four and five stories high and if the primitive appeals to you, you will be delighted." Higgins concluded that the pueblo is "the only naturally American architecture in the nation today" and that its "strong primitive appeal calls out the side of art that is not derivative." (Victor Higgins to RMS letter, July 30, 1915. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection. See also Sheine, p. 27).
Palace of Fine Arts, Panama Pacific International Exposition, 1915. Bernard Maybeck, architect. Photo by R. M. Schindler, fall 1915. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
While in San Francisco in September to view the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition Schindler undoubtedly viewed fellow Palette and Chisel Club member Walter Ufer's work which was on display in the Palace of Fine Arts. The below "Daughter of San Juan Pueblo" was exhibited in the American section along with two other pieces. Ufer made it to San Francisco to admire his handiwork in August, about a month before Schindler arrived. (Pioneer Artists of Taos by Laura M. Bickerstaff, Old West Publishing Co., Denver, 1983, p. 129).
"Daughter of San Juan Pueblo," 1914 by Walter Ufer. From Bickerstaff,, p. 164.
Palace of Liberal Arts, Panama Pacific International Exposition, 1915. Photo by R. M. Schindler, fall 1915. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
Schindler also likely viewed the prize-winning photography of future close friend Edward Weston on display in the Exposition's Palace of Liberal Arts (see above).
Not only was Schindler's interest undoubtedly piqued by the Pueblo dwellings in both Ufer's and Higgins' work viewed previously in Chicago and now in San Francisco, he also viewed the impressive Pueblo exhibition at the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego (see below).
Page from Panama-California Exposition Visitor's Guide, 1915.
That Schindler and Higgins were excited and inspired by this truly American vernacular architecture is further evidenced by Higgins' description of his Taos surroundings in a 1917 interview in which he also presciently and unwittingly echoed elements of Schindler's daring architectural design inspiration and philosophy if you merely substitute the architect for painter.
"Their architecture is the only naturally American architecture in the nation today. All other styles are borrowed from Europe.
Being so completely the product of their surroundings they give the painter a host of fresh and original ideas.
This strong primitive appeal calls out the side of art that is not derivative; it urges the painter to get his subjects, his coloring, his tone from real life about him, not from the wisdom of the studios.
Coupled with this impressive simplicity, the country makes its inhabitants daring and lovers of the "chance." In the cities men are careful, doing what others have done, bound by conventions, ringed round by tradition. The very air of Taos country, its nearness to big works of nature, drives caution from man's brain. He takes a chance. Perhaps this has led the Taos painters to be original and to be so devoted to the country and its people." (Keely, J., Chicago Sunday Herald, April 15, 1917, part 5).
Victor Higgins Studio, Taos, October 1915. Photo by R. M. Schindler. Courtest UC Santa Barbara Art, Architecture and Design Collections, R. M. Schindler Papers.
Taos Pueblo with Victor Higgins, October 1915. Photo by R. M. Schindler. Courtest UC Santa Barbara Art, Architecture and Design Collections, R. M. Schindler Papers.
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San Francisco de Asis Mission Church, Taos, October 1915. Photo by R. M. Schindler. Courtest UC Santa Barbara Art, Architecture and Design Collections, R. M. Schindler Papers.
It is clear that Schindler's 1915 Taos visitation made a deep and lasting impression and greatly inspired his early designs. During his spiritual Taos awakening, Higgins showed him around town, the Pueblo (see above) and the surrounding countryside and introduced him to the now legendary Thomas "Doc" Martin with whom he likely stayed (see above). Also having met Martin on her first day in Taos in December 1917, Luhan writes at length about the prominent town gossip in Edge of Taos Desert, the fourth volume of her autobiography Intimate Memories.
Doc Martin, no date, photographer unknown. Image scanned from Edge of Taos Desert by Mabel Dodge Luhan, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1937, p. 40. (From my collection).
Martin was so taken by Schindler that he immediately commissioned him to design a personal residence near his beloved Taos where he had lived since 1890. Schindler gathered his design inspiration from the nearby Pueblo he had recently photographed. He had not been back to Chicago a week when he received a brief letter from Martin expressing his anxiousness to view the preliminary design sketches.
Letter from "Doc" Martin, Taos to R. M. Schindler, Chicago, November 14, 1915. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
In the above letter Martin referenced Schindler's Chicago Palette & Chisel Club close friends Ufer and Higgins who had recently made their own discoveries of Taos through the largess of a consortium of patrons headed by former Chicago mayor Carter Harrison and meat-packing magnate Oscar Mayer. The trio quickly bonded when Schindler joined the Club in 1914 and learned that Ufer and Higgins were both of German ancestry and that both had recently returned from study in Munich. Schindler also befriended E. Martin Hennings, yet another Palette and Chisel Club artist of German heritage who also studied in Munich and like Ufer and Higgins was a member of Munich's American Artist's Club (see below). Hennings would not make his Taos debut until 1917.
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Victor Higgins, "Summer Day at Taos Pueblo," 1915.
Walter Ufer, "Solemn Promise," Taos ca. 1915.
"Pallette and Chisel Club," American Art Annual, Vol. XIV, 1917, p. 93.
Dividing their time between Taos and Chicago by 1915, Ufer and Higgins both exhibited their award-winning Taos work (see above for example) in annual exhibitions at the Chicago Art Institute and the 100-member Pallette and Chisel Club where they were also officers (see above). Their work was also jointly exhibited with the Los Angeles Modern Art Society as early as 1916. (Antony Anderson, "Of Art and Artists," Los Angeles Times, December 3, 1916, p. IX-12).
Victor Higgins painting the new Palette and Chisel Club summer outing clubhouse, 1915. Photo by R. M. Schindler. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
Higgins was a member of the Chicago Society of Artists and, like Frank Lloyd Wright and his mentor Louis Sullivan, the Cliff Dwellers Club. Schindler was taking life drawing classes from Higgins and others at the Pallette and Chisel Club and frequently attended and participated in club outings and group exhibitions. The activities of the club, which then met at the Athenaeum Building in the Loop (see below), seemed just the ticket for the 1914 emigre from Vienna (see below).
R. M. Schindler at an outing of the Chicago Palette and Chisel Club, 1915. Photographer unknown. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
"The Pallette and Chisel Club," The Inland Printer, Vol. 51, No. 4, July 1913, p. 602.
Ufer and Higgins would both permanently relocate from Chicago and by 1917 become influential members of the Taos Society of Artists. They were joined in Taos in 1917 by fellow Palette and Chisel Club member E. Martin Hennings who was also later elected into the Taos Society of Artists. Coincidentally, the inaugural meeting of the Society was in the home of "Doc" Martin about the time Higgins invited Schindler to visit Taos. The three Chicago transplants would also become intertwined within the social circle of Mabel Dodge Luhan shortly after her permanent move to Taos in 1919. (For example see group portrait below and Taos and It's Artists by Mabel Dodge Luhan, Duall, Sloan & Pierce, 1947 which also featured the work of Ufer, Higgins and Henning).
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Martin Residence, Taos, 1915, R. M. Schindler. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
Schindler sent Martin the artistic project renderings (see above and below) a few weeks later along with a four-page letter describing the thought process behind his "monumental" design. Schindler wrote,
"The whole building is to be carried out with the most expressive materials Taos can furnish, to give it the deepest possible rooting in the soil which has to bear it, but I will avoid by all means to copy a few ornamental forms of any old imported style even if formerly used on the place. The building has to show that it is conceived by the head of the twentieth century and it has to serve a man which is not dressed in an old Spanish uniform."
Schindler closed by asking Martin for a safe return of the drawings as soon as he reached a conclusion closing with, "I consider them and the ideas contained therein as my spiritual and material property." One can't help but wonder if these renderings were painted at the Pallette and Chisel Club.(RMS to "Doc" Martin, 12-14-1915, UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection).
Courtyard, Dr. T. P. Martin Residence, Taos, 1915, R. M. Schindler. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
Porch and Reflecting Pond, Dr. T. P. Martin Residence, Taos, 1915, R. M. Schindler. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
Floor Plan, Dr. T. P. Martin Residence, Taos, 1915, R. M. Schindler. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
Living Room, Dr. T. P. Martin Residence, Taos, 1915, R. M. Schindler. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
The project never came to fruition but Schindler successfully exhibited the drawings in the Thirtieth Annual Chicago Architectural Exhibition in April 1917 (see below) about a year before he finally achieved his goal of working for Wright. The above view of the courtyard was featured prominently as the first illustration following the foreword in the below exhibition catalog and also in the April 1917 issue of Western Architect devoted to the exhibition.
Thirtieth Annual Chicago Architectural Exhibition, Art Institue of Chicago, 1917.
The cosmic forces of Taos eventually brought together the Schindlers, Mable Dodge Luhan and her husband Tony, Ella Young, Robinson Jeffers, Lincoln Steffens, Edward Weston, the ghost of D. H. Lawrence and others to Carmel in the spring of 1930 providing the nexus for this story.
Mabel Dodge Luhan, Carmel, March 1930. Edward Weston portrait. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
After spending much of the previous two years in Taos, New Mexico enmeshed in the considerable web of Mabel Dodge Luhan (see above), in early November of 1924 the celebrated English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter D. H. Lawrence sat for his portrait (see below) in the Mexico City studio of Edward Weston. While Lawrence was satisfied with Weston's results, Edward was less so, feeling that the sitting was too brief for either artist to connect more than superficially, and that the resulting negatives were below his usual standards. Weston wrote in his daybook about the below photograph, "...unless I pull a technically fine print from a technically fine negative, the emotional or intellectual value of the photograph is for me almost negated..." (The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Vol. I, Mexico, edited by Nancy Newhall, Aperture, 1973, November 5, 1924, p. 102).
Little did Weston know that his Lawrence portraits from this session would result in the fascinating connections that follow and to this day serve as the default portraits used by Lawrence historians and biographers to illustrate their work.
Little did Weston know that his Lawrence portraits from this session would result in the fascinating connections that follow and to this day serve as the default portraits used by Lawrence historians and biographers to illustrate their work.
D. H. Lawrence, Mexico City, November 4, 1924 by Edward Weston via the internet. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
Tony Luhan, Taos, summer, 1929. Ansel Adams photograph. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
The news of Lawrence's untimely March 3, 1930 death in France reached Carmel a few days later. At the time, his early 1920s patron, Mabel Dodge Luhan and her husband Tony (see above), intimates and patrons of the vagabond Lawrence during his Taos sojourns between 1922 and 1925, were wintering in Carmel. Luhan was working on her Lorenzo in Taos manuscript which was written in the form of a novel length letter to longtime Carmel resident Robinson Jeffers (see below) describing her unflagging efforts to lure Lawrence to Taos and their dysfunctional relationship after his 1922 arrival with wife Frieda. Luhan would use her paean to Lawrence to also lure Jeffers into spending many succeeding summers in Taos in an attempt to fulfill her need for a literary champion she could orchestrate to extol the virtues of her beloved region.
Robinson Jeffers, Carmel, 1929. Edward Weston portrait. Image scanned from Lorenzo in Taos by Mabel Dodge Luhan, Alfred A. Knopf, 1932, p. 287. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
Ella Young, Carmel, March 31, 1930. Edward Weston portrait. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
Luhan and her entourage also included Ella Young (see above), an Irish revolutionary, poet and mystic who captivated everyone she came in contact with. In a piece on the little town of Halcyon a year earlier for The Carmelite, the preferred organ of the town's avant-garde community, the then creative force and modernist publisher and editor Pauline Schindler wrote,
"Ella Young, the Irish poetess, sits on the doorstep of her cabin on a sunny morning in Halcyon, and tells of strange knowledges. Children understand her deeply; the common intellectual is too much overlaid with incrustations of logical habits. She is like a seer; she feels her knowledges through the symbols which outward life presents. She lives within a reality so intense (and probably so true) that the reality in which most Americans live can be compared to it as the empty carapace of the living animal who has already left it behind." (Schindler, Pauline Gibling, "Utopia Found," The Carmelite, March 6, 1929, pp. 8-9. See also my Pauline Gibling Schindler: Vagabond Agent for Modernism (hereinafter PGS) for more on The Carmelite and its contributing editors.).
Ella Young's cottage "Claun Ard" (sandy place in Gaelic) on Paso Robles Street in Oceano, 2008. Denise Sallee photo. http://www.thesunsraven.com/dsellayoung.html
The Luhan's likely picked up Young at her home (see above) near the Oceano Dunes on their way to Carmel. Young was also a close friend of Irish San Francisco arts patron Albert Bender whose portrait Weston took in in San Francisco in 1928 (see below). (See The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Vol. II. California, September 9, 1928, p. 72 for details behind the Bender portrait sitting and PGS). 
Albert Bender, San Francisco, 1928. Edward Weston Photograph scanned from The Daybooks of Edward Weston. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
Ella Young and Virgina Adams, in the Southwest, 1929. Ansel Adams photo. Image scanned from Ansel Adams: An Autobiography, New York Graphic Society, 1985, p. 89.
Ella Young aboard Mabel Dodge Luhan's horse Jocko, Taos, summer 1929. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. (See vlso The Flowering Dusk by Ella Young, Longman's, Green & Co., New York, 1945, p. 260).
Like Luhan, Bender loved to surround himself with, and cross-pollinate the activities of, artists, poets, musicians, actors, writers and intelligentsia at his legendary San Francisco soirees. Luhan met Young and Weston friend Ansel Adams and his wife Virginia (see above) through another Bender associate, Mary Austin (see below) with whom they stayed during part of their New Mexico visit in the summer of 1929.
Mary Austin, Taos, 1929. Ansel Adams photograph. From Owens Valley History.
Young wrote of her introduction to the Luhans and her first of what would become many visits to their Taos compound,
"How did I come to be here? I had no thought of it when my friends, Ansel and Virginia Adams, proposed that I motor with them from Halcyon to Santa Fe in New Mexico where they had the loan of Mary Austin's house. I lectured in Santa Fe. Mabel Luhan and her Indian husband, Tony, came to the lecture, and as a result I find myself Mabel's guest (see below). She has a houseful of guests: Ansel and Virginia are here, so is Georgia O'Keefe (see portrait and studio photo below), the noted artist, and Rebecca Strand (see below) who works so cleverly in pastel. John Marin, whose fame is noised about America and beyond it, is here too." (Young, p. ).
Finally lured to Taos with close friend Rebecca Strand after repeated and persistent attempts by Mabel, O'Keeffe remarked to Young at breakfast one morning in Luhan's dining room, that she had seen her up very early to which she replied, "No, I just got up. You must have seen my astral body." (From Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe by Laurie Lisle, Heinemann, 1987, p. 165).
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Georgia O'Keeffe, with her new Ford, Taos, summer, 1929.
In letters written on her way back to New York to Rebecca (see above) and Mabel, whom she did not say goodbye to before leaving, O'Keeffe described her painting "D. H. Lawrence's Tree" (see below). completed during a couple week stay at his Kiowa Ranch with Dorothy Brett.
"...I also got a painting of the big pine tree as you see it lying on that table under it at night -- it looks as tho it is standing on its head with all the stars around - Pretty good - for me..." (Letter to Rebecca Strand [James] while on train from New Mexico to New York, 24 August 1929.). "I had one particular painting -- that tree in Lawrences front yard as you see it when you lie under it on the table - with stars - it looks as tho it is standing on its head..." (Letter to Mabel Dodge Luhan from Taos, August 1929. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.).
"D. H. Lawrence's Tree," Georgia O'Keeffe, Kiowa Ranch, summer 1929.
Luhan published an article reminiscing upon O'Keeffe's 1929 visit in the June 1931 issue of Creative Art which was illustrated with her paintings "D. H. Lawrence's Tree" (see above), "Taos Pueblo" (see below), "Mountains of the West," "Black Cross," and "Ranchos Church." Her work done during the 1929 visit was exhibited at Stieglitz's An American Place Gallery shortly after her return. Luhan described the invigorating influence the high altitude in Taos had on O'Keefe's work. She also humorously wrote about Georgia's learning to drive her new Ford (see earlier above),
"Such a nerve-racking experience falls to the lot of the few - to go out with Georgia driving her Ford the first month she had it! Beck Strand had the dubious joy of teaching her and we all watched her lovely silver hair grow more silvery day by day...Finally we recognized that Georgia was destined to become a demon driver!" (Luhan, Mabel Dodge, "Georgia O'Keeffe in Taos," Creative Art, June 1931, pp. 409).
Taos Pueblo, 1929. Georgia O'Keeffe.
Luhan continues, "She doesn't make whoopee like other people do, but she makes it just the same. Her whoopee is of the finer nerves, the more poignant vision, awarenesses few others even dream of and perceptions that have to remain esoteric to the majority." She prophetically ends with, "You better let her come again, Stieglitz." (ibid, p. 410).
A celebrated author from her earlier California days (see below), Austin, with introductory facilitation and strong encouragement and financial backing from Bender and entree to photograph the Pueblo gained through Tony Luhan, collaborated with Adams on his seminal 1930 book Taos Pueblo. The book included text by Austin and Adams' photographs from this 1929 visit. (Adams, pp. 89-91).
George Sterling, Mary Austin, Jack London and Jimmie Hooper on Carmel Beach, ca. 1906. Photo by Arnold Genthe. From Wikepedia.
Lincoln Steffens, Carmel, 1929. Edward Weston portrait from Weston's Westons: Portraits and Nudes
by Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
by Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
Another reason Luhan was attracted to Carmel was that it was the home of another of her early New York salon habitues, Lincoln Steffens (see above) who had moved to Carmel with wife Ella Winter (see below) in 1927 to work on his autobiography. The couple divorced in 1929 but still lived amicably under the same roof. By the time of Luhan's visit, Steffens and Winter had wrested publishing and editorial control of the local weekly newspaper, The Carmelite, from longtime Weston family friend, Pauline Schindler who had moved to Carmel with son Mark after leaving RMS and Kings Road in 1927. (For much more on this takeover see Pauline Gibling Schindler: Vagabond Agent for Modernism).
Ella Young wrote of the Fates which brought together this circle of luminaries, which also included Sinclair Lewis and his wife Dorothy Thompson, in the spring of 1930.
"Why have we, all of us, foregathered? Why did Mabel suddenly decide that she must see the West Coast? We have slid together like beads on a string! Perhaps it is not wholly by chance. Perhaps there is a design somewhere, a pattern could we disentangle it! Who knows?" (Young, p. 299).
The answer to Young's question may be found in Luhan's previously-mentioned piece on O'Keefe in Creative Art where, likely in conscious attempt to lure her and other artists back to Taos, she states,
"Composite of ethers, oceans, mountains and plains, we need, for our continued sense of life, to share them all from one time to another; we need occasionally to go from cities of the plain to the high peaks above the clouds lest our mountain cells grow too hungry from living exclusively where the great marketing is carried on. And those who live overlong in the upper ether need, sometimes, the sea and, descending to it, "suffer a sea change," an alteration of rhythm, a moistening of the tissues after aridity, an expansion of the heart accustomed to beat high but not broad." (Luhan, Mabel Dodge, "Georgia O'Keeffe in Taos," Creative Art, June 1931, pp. 407).
John and Molly O'Shea Residence, Wildcat Cove, Carmel Highlands, 1925. Photographer unknown. Image scanned from John O'Shea, 1876-1956: The Artist's Life as I Know It by Walter A. Nelson-Rees, WIM, 1985, p. 44.
Weston met the Luhans and Young at a get together at the house of John and Molly O'Shea (see above), longtime friends of fellow Irishmen Young and Bender, a week before Lawrence's death. Of his first encounter with Luhan and her coterie, Weston wrote,"At the O'Sheas' Monday late, we met Mabel Dodge Luhan and her Indian husband. One might expect a young, handsome, dashing sort of buck,- instead of the rather stolid, heavy old Indian we met. With them was Ella Young, who impressed me more than any of the party. They will come here today. Sean showed a number of paintings I had not seen. He has a dazzling color sense, and often achieves fine form." (Daybooks, February 25, 1930, p. 143).
Ella Young wrote of the same evening,
"A night in that house by the sea that John O'Shea's pictures and Molly's rose-damasks and blue enamels made so colourful. Firelight glinting on copper bowls and hammered silver, a wind in the twisted cypress trees, a wave-murmur from the cliff-foot. The sound of a strange instrument on which a young composer is playing, fingering the strings of it lovingly: the long-necked rich-voiced instrument that his hands had made. He is singing, or rather chanting, as he plays. He is singing for Molly. She is like a lady in some far-off time. Firelight makes the only colour in her face. Her long straight gown is rose-red." (Young, p. 329).
Ella Young portrait by John O'Shea, ca. 1943. Image scanned from Nelson-Rees, p.
Approximate view from the site of the future O'Shea Residence, ca. 1923. To the right, the D. L. James Residence, "Seaward," 1922-3, by Charles Sumner Greene. Point Lobos at the top left.
Dan James, son of D. L. James, 1932, Edward Weston photograph.
Presaging his and Weston's nearby seminal Point Lobos work, Ansel Adams reminisced of the magical setting of the O'Shea house (see above) on his first visit with Bender in June 1926,
"They lived in a massive home built of local stone and huge timbers. ... As the fog lifted, windows were opened and the sound of the sea came over me, different than the mountain magic of the Sierra, but unforgettable." (Adams, p. 85-6).
That same afternoon Bender drove Adams to Tor House and introduced him to Jeffers (see below). (Adams, p. 86).
Robinson Jeffers and Albert Bender at Tor House, 1926. Ansel Adams photograph? From Occidental College Library Collection.
John O'Shea, Carmel Highlands, February 20, 1930. Edward Weston portrait. Image scanned from Nelson-Rees, p. 64. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
Coincidentally, Weston had taken the O'Shea's portraits (see above and below) at his first visit to their house only five days prior to meeting the Luhans and Young there. Of this session he wrote,
"Thursday I went to photograph Molly and John O'Shea, at their Highlands home: real persons both of them! Evidently well-to-do which hasn't hurt them, indeed they are amongst the few, one might say, whom money has enriched, - added to their inherent charm. I did Molly first, in John's (or Shawn's - is that the Irish spelling? - I think not, but like the sound better) studio. She is difficult to work with, camera shy to a degree, - why I cannot see, being a beautiful woman of fine carriage. While working I noted Leda, their police-dog, asleep in a most beautiful posture, and made three negatives, which I look forward to with great interest. After lunch, and cocktails, too many for me not used to drink, Sean (I think this correct) took me to see their rocks. I was amazed at the concentrated drama and strength of that point." (Daybooks, February 22, 1930, p. 142).
Molly O'Shea, Carmel, May 1, 1929 or February 20, 1930. Edward Weston portrait. Daybooks, p. 119 and/or p. 142. Image scanned from Nelson-Rees, p. 64. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
After experiencing the hospitality of the O'Sheas for a few months and shortly before returning to Taos for the summer, Luhan wrote in her "review" of Molly's homemaking skills in The Carmelite,
"Well I am going to write a review of someone who is not called accomplished in the usual sense of the word, but who is, in reality, very gifted, indeed. A gifted woman is one who sheds a gentle light all around her - and that is what Molly O'Shea does. She knows how to create a pleasant atmosphere by a kind of radiation. Perhaps it is instinctive and comes from her natural kindness - for thoughts are generous and never mean." (Luhan, Mabel Dodge, "Molly O'Shea, The Carmelite, May 15, 1930).
Just before learning of Lawrence's death, Luhan penned a feature article on Young for The Carmelite in conjunction with her upcoming talk at the Denny-Watrous Gallery reminiscing about Ella's lecture in Santa Fe the previous summer. In it she wrote,
"Here is one clearly related to the leprechauns and the djinns it seems. Here is one who believes in the fairies. She believes so strongly in the fairies that she convinces others about them. One evening she was lecturing to an extremely sophisticated audience in Santa Fe. Behind her sat Mary Austin, raking the faces before her for possible smiles - ready to deal with them - for she suspected what Ella Young might tell and she feared what might happen. But it didn't! Ella Young so entranced those listeners - who had heard all other things - with the Fairy Folk that at the end, one world-worn painter rose and asked wistfully, "Miss Young, can you tell us any technique one might employ to develop the faculty for seeing fairies?" Even Mary Austin herself smiled at that. ...she is one of the very few of those who are dwellers of two worlds: and is equally at home in each." (Luhan, Mabel Dodge, "Friend of the Fairies," The Carmelite, March 5, 1929, p. 5).In the same issue Mabel wrote a feature on her and Steffen's visiting mutual friend and salon-mate and Pauline Schindler idol, Max Eastman (see above), who stating that he would like to come back to Carmel to live for a while. (Luhan, Mabel Dodge, "Max Eastman in Carmel," The Carmelite, March 5, 1930, p. 7). Also accompanying Luhan's piece was the poem "To Max Eastman" by another Luhan New York salon-mate, John Reed (see left below). Coincidentally, the very next issue included a lengthy review of Weston's exhibition then on display at the Denny-Watrous Gallery. (Lyon, Ernest, "Edward Weston - Creative Artist," The Carmelite, March 12, 1930, p. 7).
Edward Weston and Margarethe Mather, "Max Eastman at Water's Edge", 1921. Platinum-palladium print, tipped to a mount, signed by Mather and signed and dated by Weston in pencil on the mount, matted, a Museum of Modern Art label on the reverse, 1921. (From Sotheby's: Photographs from the Museum of Modern Art : April 25, 2001 : Sale NY7632, p. 140. See also my Oceano Dunes and the Westons).
Movers and Shakers, Volume Three of Intimate Memories by Mabel Dodge Luhan, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936.
The Luhan's and Ella Young visited Weston again on March 25th after which he entered,
"Mable [sic] Dodge Luhan in, and bought two more heads of Lawrence and one of Jeffers: a nice birthday present. Ella Young with her and I asked for a sitting, because I admire her and because her portraits may sell. Ella Young believes in fairies, - and of course that would appeal to me, anything unorthodox does. I told her that I had slept during most of her talk [at the Denny-Watrous Gallery], but felt that my subconscious self had listened very attentively. She was not surprised, in fact she was pleased, and said this often happened when the subconscious mind wished to especially listen in. This partial understanding of my desire to sleep through important evenings, came to me as I told her of my nap during her talk. I knew she would not mind, or rather would understand and be complimented. " (Daybooks, Vol. II, March 25, 1930, p. 149. Weston is referring to Young's lecture at the Denny Watrous Gallery which was reported upon in The Carmelite).
Ella Young, Carmel, March 31, 1930. Edward Weston photograph. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
Young sat for her portrait (see above) on March 31st. Weston wrote of the occasion, "Then I did that fairy-like person, Ella Young, with good results." (Daybooks, March 31, 1930, p. 149).
Tony Luhan, Carmel, April 8, 1930. Edward Weston portrait. Image scanned from Lorenzo in Taos by Mabel Dodge Luhan, Alfred A. Knopf, 1932, p. 33. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
A week later Weston had guests from the south, Galka Scheyer and R. M. "Michael" Schindler, who were possibly returning the unsold prints from his recent exhibition at the Schindler-designed Braxton Gallery in Hollywood and likely also making arrangements with Dene Denny and Hazel Watrous for Pauline Schindler's Contemporary Creative Architecture exhibition slated to be on display at their gallery the first two weeks of May. (For more details see my Richard Neutra and the California Art Club). Of their visit he wrote,
"Galka Scheyer and Michael Schindler have been here and we have seen much of them these two days past. A stimulating contact it has been. Galka repelled me at the very start of our acquaintance but now I find myself wishing she would drop in once more before leaving. She is a dynamo of energy. She would wear me out in a few days, - but insight of unusual clarity, and an ability to express herself in words, brilliantly, forcefully, to hit the nail cleanly, buoys me up for the time. She is an ideal "go-between" for the artist and his public. She and Michael had a two day controversy over one of my prints,whether or no it could legitimately be hung upside down, both of them agreeing that it was stronger upside down but Michael insisting that the objectivity of photography required the print to be shown as originally seen: she protesting the imposed limitation, insisting that no rule should bind one's freedom of expression. I inclined to Michael's side, at least in the case of the print in question, fish and kelp, for one cannot get away from objective rendering of perspective and the fish turned upside down gave me a disagreeable feeling of falling out of the print, maybe only because I made the negative. Granted the lines, pattern, etc., became more dynamic reversed, art must be more than pattern, form, for otherwise anyone could learn to compose by rule and be an artist,-whichLuhan would later use her purchases of Weston's Lawrence and Jeffers portraits to illustrate Lorenzo in Taos along with one of Tony taken a couple weeks later (see earlier above). Weston wrote of the occasion, "Yesterday, lunch with the Luhans. And after, Don Antonio - "Tony" - was persuaded to go out on the rocks with me and my Graflex. I made three dozen negatives, and some brilliant ones." (Daybooks, April 9, 1930, p. 152). A few days later he wrote,
could never be." (Daybooks, April 7, 1930, p. 151). (Author's note: About this time Pauline Schindler wrote a review of Robinson Jeffer's latest book of poems, "Dear Judas" for Survey Graphic and was busily curating the "Contemporary Creative Architecture of California" exhibition at UCLA which opened on April 20th and traveled to the Denny-Watrous Gallery from May 1st through 15th (See Schindler, Pauline, "Contemporary Architecture," The Carmelite, May 1, 1930, p. 6. See also PGS for more details.)
"I printed a head of Tony Luhan to have ready when they came after proofs. The print was extraordinary, - about the limit in brilliance of chemical quality, and powerful in presentation of the person. I was more than happy. Now Tony is a rather flabby Indian, settled down into a life of ease, well-fed, middle-aged inactivity. In my print, I gave him a heroic strength he does not possess. So when he lumbered in, I got out the enlargement, anticipating at least a grunt of approval. Silence - Well, I thought, Indians are never ecstatic. Mable Luhan was in the car. We took the print and proofs to her. She responded, exclaiming, "Like a head of bronze." "How do you like it Tony?" "I don't like." "Why?" I ventured at last. "I look too old, - a hundred years maybe." !!!!! - Collapse of the photographer - " (Daybooks, April 12, 1930, pp. 152-3).
D. H. Lawrence Special Issue, The Carmelite, March 19, 1930. p. 1. Linoleum cut by W. Johnstone after the 1924 Weston portrait at the beginning of this article. Courtesy Harrison Memorial Library, Carmel.
The news of Lawrence's passing was felt deeply among the literati of Carmel. Ella Winter wrote in the foreword to a special 16-page Lawrence tribute in The Carmelite (see above) shortly after Lawrence's death,
"In the afternoon [the day before being notified of Lawrence's death] we had talked about Lawrence at the Jeffers house; Mabel Luhan had told of his days at Taos, of his ranch, of his trips to Mexico and had described his childhood and youth in England." (Winter, Ella, "D. H. Lawrence, Introduction," The Carmelite, Special Supplement, March 19, 1930, p. II). See more at Pauline Gibling Schindler: Vagabond Agent for Modernism).Knowing of Weston's 1924 meeting and portrait of Lawrence and that other writers then in Carmel had also known him well, Winter collaborated with the group to produce a special 16-page tribute, "D. H. Lawrence." Weston contributed, "Lawrence in Mexico," Mabel Dodge Luhan, "The Lawrence I Knew," Orrick Johns, "Lawrence in Italy," Jeanne d'Orge, "Lawrence the Wayfarer," and Carmelite contributing editor Dora Hagemeyer, "The Lover of Flowers." ("D. H. Lawrence," The Carmelite, Special Supplement, March 19, 1930, pp. I-XVI). (Author's note: D'Orge met Lawrence while viewing a solar eclipse with her husband in Lompoc in 1923. (Better Than Beauty: The Life and Work of Jeanne d'Orge by Jane Wilgress, Park Place Publications, Pacific Grove, 2004, p. 42).
"Lawrence in Mexico," by Edward Weston, The Carmelite, March 19, 1930, Special Supplement, pp. IX-XI.
Using excerpts from his Daybooks and additional remembrances, Weston cobbled together a fascinating piece (see excerpt above) centered around his impressions of Lawrence and a critique of his The Plumed Serpent which was not very well regarded by Weston's Mexican circle of friends including the muralist Diego Rivera. In early November 1924 Weston wrote in his Daybook, "D. H. Lawrence, English author and poet, in with Luis Quintanilla. My first impression was a most agreeable one. He will sit for me Tuesday." (Daybooks, November 2, 1924, Vol. I, p. 101).
Tina Modotti and Pepe Quintanilla, 1924. Edward Weston photograph. From Hooks, p. 95. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
Quintanilla was a Mexican poet, professor of English at the University of Mexico, and diplomat in the protocol division of Foreign Affairs and was looking after DHL after his attendance at a P.E.N. banquet in his honor the night before. (The Letters of D. H. Lawrence by James T. Boulton, p. 162). Luis's brother Pepe was also in Weston's Mexico City circle of friends and had begun an affair with Tina Modotti (see above) sometime around the summer of 1924 which continued through Weston's sojourn back to California during the winter of 1925-6. (See for example Tina Modotti: Photographer and Revolutionary by Margaret Hooks, HarperCollins, 1995, p. 94). Weston's Daybooks continued,
"Tomorrow I dine at a luncheon in honor of the United States Ambassador to Mexico. God knows his name - I don't - but duty calls. In preparation I trimmed the fringe from my trousers and borrowed a hat from Rafael [Sala]. Now to buy a collar and I shall be ready for the fray." (Daybooks, Monday, November 3, p. 101).For The Carmelite Weston wrote of his afterthoughts regarding the luncheon,
"I wish I had cancelled my date, and spent the time with Lawrence. But evidently I was considering business before pleasure, and from the condition of my wardrobe, I must have needed business!"Weston recollected for The Carmelite that Lawrence came to the sitting with his wife Frieda and a Miss [Dorothy] Brett who he was given to understand was Lawrence's secretary. His Tuesday evening Daybook entry read,
"The sitting of Lawrence this morning. A tall, slender, rather reserved individual, with reddish beard. He was amiable enough and we parted in a friendly way, but the contact was too brief for either of us to penetrate more than superficially the other: no way to make a sitting. Perhaps I should not have attempted it; now I actually lack sufficient interest to develop my plates." (Daybooks, November 4, 1924, Mexico, p. 102)Weston further recalled,
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