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Rachel McClelland Sutton was born in 1887 in the prosperous Pittsburgh suburb of Shadyside. She was raised at Sunnyledge, the family home designed by Henry Hobson Richardson. Her father, Dr. James H. McClelland, was a prominent surgeon and a founder of Shadyside Hospital. Her mother was from the Bakewell-Pears glass family. She was raised at the family home until the age of eight by a German governess, and then attended a private school, Miss Ward's School. Sunnyside eventually became her permanent home, aside from four years when she was married to William S. Sutton, a certified public accountant who died in 1954.
Sutton lived at the family home for most of her adult life. Her first lessons in drawing and watercolor took place there under Eleanor Stoney, who had studied at the Pittsburgh School of Design and the Academie Julian in Paris. Afterwards she attended the preparatory school of the Pennsylvania School for Women (now Chatham College), spent two years at the Masters School at Dobbs Ferry, and received a degree in fine arts in 1916 from the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Sutton also attended classes at Art Students League in Pittsburgh and at the summer school of the Art Students League in New York. Sutton travelled throughout the United States and Canada, and went abroad 16 times, the first time when she was two years old. In 1919 she joined the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, and exhibited with them throughout her sixty-one years of membership. In the 1919 Associated Artists exhibit, her work was singled out for praise along with her Carnegie Tech colleagues Wilfred Readio and Samuel Rosenberg.
She also exhibited at the Butler Art Institute in Youngstown, Ohio; the Allegheny County Garden Club in 1943 (prize); and the State Teacher's College at Indiana, Pennsylvania, in 1945. Her early work includes figure studies, landscapes, marines, portraits and still lifes, and she worked in pastels, oils and watercolor. She also painted many views of Pittsburgh and subjects in and around her family home. Her early paintings show an interest in impressionism and post-impressionism, while in the 1930s and 1940s her style reflects the influence of Regionalism. In 1945 Sutton joined the Watercolor Society of Pittsburgh, and her work from this point on shows an interest in modernism. She was made an honorary member of the society in 1974.
In her eighty-second year she gave up painting due to failing eyesight, although her work was later shown in eight local exhibitions. In 1980 the Carnegie Institute hosted a retrospective exhibition of her work. The artist died in Pittsburgh in 1982. "Coal and Iron Ore Dock" was presented to the Steidle Collection by the artist between April and November 1935. Its shows a dirt road winding down a hill towards a dock on Lake Erie, which is visible in the background. The scene is composed of high-keyed reds and greens, and reflects the Regionalist style popularized by artists such as Charles Burchfield, Thomas Hart Benton and Reginald Marsh.
Sources:
Chew, Paul, ed. Southwestern Pennsylvania Painters. Collection of Westmoreland Museum of Art. Greensburg: Westmoreland Museum of Art, 1989.
Hunter, Martha. "Rachel Sutton, Painter," Carnegie Magazine 54, September 1980, pp. 2-6.
Strazdes, Diana. American Paintings and Sculpture to 1945 in the Carnegie Museum of Art. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1991.
(no title given), Carnegie Magazine, February, 1932.
"Lilies and Zinnias," Carnegie Magazine, February, 1943.
Falk, Peter Hastings, ed. Who Was Who In American Art. Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1985.
This document copyright © 1996, Eric John Schruers