Olive Rush (1836-1966)

Known primarily for teaching art to Southwest Native American children and painting Native American portraits and genre, Olive Rush encouraged Native American pride in their own traditions at a time when white culture was moving aggressively into New Mexico and Arizona. She was the first woman to be given a one-woman exhibition in New Mexico. Her career was expansive, both in geography and style. She lived the first part of her life on the East Coast and her later years in the Southwest and her work, including illustration, ranged from traditional to cubist and expressionist. She was born in Fairmount, Indiana, to a Quaker family and enrolled at the Friends Academy before moving at age 17 to Washington D.C. There she studied at the Corcoran School of Art. By 1898 she was a professional magazine illustrator and studied at the Art Students League in New York with John Twachtman. In 1904 she went to Wilmington, Delaware to study illustration with Howard Pyle and she also created mural painting. In Paris she studied at the Richard Miller Class for Painters. In 1914, at the age of 41, she first went to the Southwest and in 1921 settled in Santa Fe, becoming one of the first eastern artists to move there.

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