This article honors two remarkable women.

The first is art historian and curator Maureen St. Gaudens.

The second is one of the extraordinary artists Maureen helped rescue from obscurity, the brilliant California painter Ruth Miller Kempster.

exhibition curator Maurine St. Gaudens and Co-curator Joseph Morsman
with Vivian Springfield's Monterey Cypress, c1925.

In 2018, Maureen St. Gaudens and her trusted colleague Joseph Morsman assembled the landmark exhibition Something Revealed: California Women Artists Emerge at the Pasadena Museum of History. Linda and I were fortunate to attend. We stood in awe before works by many of California's long-forgotten women artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, painters whose talent had too often been overlooked by history. Thanks to Maureen's dedication, their art and their stories are once again being seen and appreciated.

St. Gaudens and Morsman also authored the monumental four-volume reference work Emerging from the Shadows: A Survey of Women Artists in California, 1860–1960.

Describing the project, Artnet observed that Gaudens and Morsman "had to act as curators, art historians, private investigators, and genealogists, painstakingly uncovering the long-lost details of these women's lives. Their work has transformed our understanding of California art history."

a wall in the exhibition had a few urban scene paintings
by one of Linda's and my favorites, Florence Young, 1872-1874

The exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of History was a remarkable by-product of the years of research. Their groundbreaking work uncovered the stories of dozens of talented California women artists who had largely vanished from art history. As curators, they undertook the monumental task of locating surviving paintings and bringing them together in one place, a feat that was far more challenging than it might seem.

History has not been kind these artists. Although their talent often matched that of their male contemporaries, they rarely received the same recognition during their lifetimes. And after their passing, much of their work failed to survive in the intervening decades.

Many of these paintings were once cherished possessions, proudly displayed in homes and admired by their owners. But as generations passed, tastes changed and memories faded. Paintings that had once been treasured were tucked away in attics and garages, neglected, damaged, sold for pennies at estate sales, or simply discarded. Along with them disappeared an important part of California's artistic heritage.

Ruth Miller Kempster was a painter, muralist, sculptor, and teacher. She created a body of work that combined social realism, psychological insight, and elements of surrealism, often focusing on the experiences and constraints faced by women. Today she is increasingly recognized as an important figure in California modernism.

Born in Chicago in 1904, she was raised in Pasadena. Her father was a prosperous engineer and author. Her parents expected her to attend Vassar College, but that wasn't Ruth's plan. With a wide independence streak, she was determined to become an artist.

Her artistic training was extensive.

She studied at the Stickney Memorial Art School in Pasadena and the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles before continuing her education at the Art Students League in New York. In Paris she attended the L'Ecole de Beaux-Arts. At that time, the school did not allow unmarried female students work from nude models. That did not suit Ruth. She did not like limitations being placed on women artists, so he moved on to Florence where studied mural and fresco techniques in Italy. There she met a young Italian artist, and moved with him to Rome.

Her parents visited her in 1928, and a reluctant Ruth, at her parent's insistence, was soon on her way home without the Italian artist. Of all the paintings she did while in Europe, she took only one home to California, Gypsie Woman.

Returning to California, Miller developed a distinctive style that blended realism with symbolic and psychological content. At age 27, she met and married a young electrical engineer, but divorced a year later. During the 1930s she taught art in Pasadena and built a reputation as a talented painter and muralist. Although she continued painting throughout her life, her public visibility declined after the 1950s. Her last major solo exhibition was held at the Pasadena Art Institute in 1953, and much of her work disappeared from public view for decades.

Many of Ruth's paintings did not survive the decades. From the what has survived, critics now recognize her as one of California's most compelling and overlooked painters. The Los Angeles Times described her work as a "stark, modern style" that fused social realism with the surreal, citing her self-portraits, industrial scenes, and psychologically charged images of women. Another critic praised her paintings as "exceptionally well rendered," noting their "great intelligence and biting wit."

I found Kempster's paintings utterly captivating. Beneath their technical skill and brilliant composition lies a powerful social conscience. Her work doesn't simply depict a subject, it asks questions, challenges assumptions, and invites viewers to see the world with passion and through a sharper, more critical lens.

Painted ten years apart, Marta and Housewife should be seen displayed together. Seen side by side, they feel like two chapters in the same story, revealing Kempster's evolving thoughts about women and the roles they are expected to play. Look closely and you'll notice that the women in both paintings bear a striking resemblance to the artist herself. They are not self-portraits, but Kempster seems to have borrowed something of her own appearance as she expresses ideas that were clearly personal and deeply felt.

Marta (also known as Bohemian), painted in 1925 when Kempster was twenty-one, shows a young woman comfortable in her own skin. She stands with confidence, meeting the viewer on her own terms, yet there is also a sense of tension. Her partially draped body suggests both freedom and restraint, as if she is testing the boundaries of what a woman could be in the 1920s. She appears confident, independent, determined, and unwilling to be defined by convention. Whether Kempster intended this young woman as a reflection of herself or as a broader ideal of modern womanhood, the painting radiates an unmistakable sense of personal independence and strength.

A decade later, Kempster painted Housewife (1935) during the Great Depression. The woman at its center possesses much of the same strength and resolve we see in Marta, but her circumstances are very different. Here she is framed by the strictures and responsibilities of domestic life. In the background, a young daughter reaches into a cupboard, learning the daily rituals of the household, while her husband sits in the adjoining room, absorbed in his newspaper. Unlike Marta who is determined to define herself, the Housewife seems trapped, defined by her domestic tasks, yoked by her apron strings to her gender defined role. Her direct gaze is revealing. She is not defeated, but she is not content either. She seems do be in a perpetual state of longing.

In these two paintings, the younger woman represents independence and possibility, the older one embodies endurance and compromise. Together, the two paintings suggest a conversation about the distance between youthful aspirations and the realities many women encountered as they moved into adulthood.

Ruth's professional artistic breakthrough came in 1932 when her painting Struggle, a powerful depiction of two Olympic wrestlers, one Black and one white, won the Silver Medal in the art competition of the Los Angeles Olympic Games. At the time, art competitions were included as official Olympic events, making her one of the few California artists ever to win an Olympic medal. Critics said the painting lacked movement and aggression. But Ruth wasn't after the athleticism, she was expressing her social concern and awareness. What she was really doing was making a comment on state of race relations of her time, a daringly bold statement for any artist to tackle in 1932.

In the depths of the Great Depression, Ruth expressed her empathy for the unemployed. In Working Stiff, the worker's hands carry much of this paintings message, wasted strength, emptiness and hopelessness. Ruth was a master at painting hands, with a practiced technique and a deep understanding of anatomy. This particular painting recalls some of the depression work done by another artist of the Depression era, Maynard Dixon.

For us today, the history of the attack on Pearl Harbor was the opening chapter of World War II. But for Ruth in 1941, Pearl Harbor was the only chapter. The events of the war were yet to unfold. The country was wrapped up in fear, gloom and apprehension. In Death of Christmas, Ruth comments on how the Christmas Spirit of 1941 was forcefully turned up-side-down. "Peace on Earth, good will toward men" had been drowned out by the headlines of of the day, "This is War!" The crossed boards at the Christams Tree's base are silhouetted against the heavens, as if offering a prayerful plea for help and strength in in the darkness of perilous times.

In The Search, a lone figure ascends a narrow staircase carved into a dark cave of stone, heading toward a distant source of light. In this painting, Ruth transforms this climbing as an unmistakable metaphor for personal struggle, faith, ambition, and the enduring search for meaning and relevance.

In Evening, a solitary woman stands at the edge of a quiet landscape, gazing across still water as daylight fades into dusk. Painted with simplified forms and muted tones, Evening reflects Ruth's gift for transforming ordinary moments into scenes of quiet psychological depth. Ruth was often drawn to mood, introspection, and emotional ambiguity. Painted during the mature phase of her career, Evening reveals Kempster's affinity for modernist design and symbolism.

In Self Portrait, Ruth presents herself not as a romanticized artist, but as an artist in her mid forties, an experienced and thoughtful observer. Armed with a paintbrush in hand, she confronts the viewer directly with a steady, introspective gaze. Her expression is serious, even questioning. The subdued landscape behind her dissolves into soft atmospheric forms, directing attention to the face and emphasizing the psychological rather than the physical setting.The portrait becomes not merely a record of appearance, but an exploration of character, ambition, and artistic identity.

Why does Ruth Miller Kempster matter? She occupies a unique place in California art history. Her work bridges several important movements, American Scene painting, Social Realism, and early California modernism, while offering a distinctly female perspective that was rare in the 1930s. Her paintings reveal an artist who was not afraid to address race, gender, social inequality, and the anxieties of modern life. Today she is increasingly viewed as one of the most significant rediscovered women artists of twentieth-century California.

"Corrick's Stationery and Gifits is honored to present a retrospective exhibit of the works of Maurice Lapp, a beloved Santa Rosa artist and teacher." -- Corrick's website.
 
This newly-expanded collection of Maury's works offers outstanding representation of his diverse styles. Come in, enjoy, and take a treasure home.

We published the article below in December 2023. Many of the same paintings are included in this current exhibition.

Corricks is located in downtown Santa Rosa, 637 Fourth Street. Mondays-Saturdays 10-5. Its large selection of gifts and arts is dazzling.