A flier advertising pen and ink drawings
by Winifred Murphy.
Sketch of a house by Winifred Murphy,
charcoal and watercolor, 1969.
Interior of 31 Sheldon Place by Winifred Murphy, original pen and ink drawing reprinted on a Christmas card.
Two very different artists who lived and worked in Hastings in the mid-20th century are the subjects of the latest exhibit at the Hastings Historical Society Observatory Cottage.
Helen Patterson Williams was an established commercial artist when she moved to Hastings from Boston in 1907 with her new husband, Herbert Deland Williams, also an artist. She specialized in Arts and Crafts-style jewelry and interior decoration. Allergic to oil paint, Mrs. Williams worked mostly in watercolor and tempera; her many views of the Hastings landscape and waterfront have a distinctive mellow hue. She was also a prolific producer of illustrated and illumined social invitations, many of which contained local scenes. After living in Hastings for 40 years, the Williamses retired to Vermont.
Apart from her finely detailed pen-and-ink drawings, Winifred Murphy is probably best remembered as a long figure walking up and down the hills of Hastings. Hers was a solitary life often punctuated by illness. She graduated from Dobbs Ferry High School in 1940 and worked for three years in the drafting department at Anaconda in Hastings. After that "all-demanding monotony," she went back to college, graduated from Barnard, and taught art for two years until illness brought her back to Hastings. Her walks through the village became part of her recovery and then a path to a new career: She began making and selling pen-and-ink drawings of private houses in the area, many of them still cherished by the homes' owners. Her artwork also included wood block printing, textiles and decorative wallpaper friezes, and abstract oil paintings. She died in a Manhattan nursing home in 1996.
The Historical Society exhibit includes about a dozen of Helen Patterson Williams' paintings plus a collection of small postcards and, from Winifred Murphy, both large and small sketches of local homes and buildings plus paintings and wall hangings.
Please join us to celebrate these two artists who so appreciated the picturesque quality of our village.
For more information, call 914/478-2249.
A Hastings view of the Palisades from a
Christmas card by Helen Patterson Williams,
hand printed, 1940.
The Clearing by Helen Patterson Williams,
oil, 1923.
Dock Street, Hastings by Helen Patterson
Williams, watercolor, 1930.