Ellaraye
Librarians have always been hunters and gatherers, and one of the most gratifying (and often challenging) jobs that the library staff does for our patrons is help track down people, whether subjects of artwork, artists themselves, or owners of artwork. Recently, Curator Jane Myers contacted the library to help her locate the whereabouts of the subject of one of the key portrait paintings in the current exhibition, Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s. Dickson Reeder completed the painting Ellaraye in 1945. Its subject, Ellaraye Whitman, is depicted in a diaphanous white dress with a piece of sheet music on her lap. Jane’s last address for Ms. Whitman was in Fort Worth, but the apartment complex where she lived had been demolished, and the phone number was out of service. After searching several Web-based directories that proved to be dead ends, we found a directory, www.whitepages.com, that listed her as living in Santa Fe, NM. Though the directory listed her address, it did not include a phone number. This particular directory offered the ability to search for neighbors, and we quickly identified a neighbor’s telephone number. Jane subsequently made contact with the neighbor who knew “Ella” very well and offered to pass along that the museum was interested in making contact. Jane later had a telephone conversation with Ella and was able to learn more about the painting and also about Ella’s relationship with the Circle. Here are some notes that Jane has provided from her conversation:
She [Ellaraye] is 83 and … walks with a cane … She remembers posing for the portrait by Dickson Reeder and that she had to sit very still. The white dress she was wearing was her own. She was younger than the rest of the Circle and said she was like a “mascot.” … When I asked her how she became associated with the Circle, she said that she worked at Crump(?) Company in the phonograph department. Charles Richards, a draftsman for Convair, who had gotten to know her (as a customer, I think) said that “Dickson has got to see you!” [i.e. she was very pretty]. She said that both Dickson and Flora were “very gifted.”
Dickson Reeder (1912-1970)
Ellaraye, 1945
Oil on canvas
Louise Hopkins Underwood