1930s
The work sampled here dates back to the 1930s–when Sara was a student at the Girls Latin School and Mass School of Art, in Boston. The family had moved to Boston from Cleveland after acquiring children’s camps, a lodge, annex, and a cabin in Stinson Lake, New Hampshire.
In the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s, Sara’s family spent summers managing the children’s camps and other properties, struggling to pay the bills during the Great Depression and with rationing and anti-semitism during Word War II.
Sara hoped to go to art school, but her father told her that would mean attending Massachusetts College of Art and living at home. Instead, she accepted a scholarship to the University of Chicago–graduating after three years, in 1941, with a degree in economics.
Link to more 1930s Artwork-Boston
Link to commentary on 1930s Boston influences by cultural historian Wesley Balla, PhD
1940s: NEW HAMPSHIRE
In her diaries from the 1940s, Sara describes some of her experiences in Chicago (such as participating in support of strikes by domestic workers).
She also writes about working at the family’s New Hampshire properties: hearing mice scamper in the walls of her cabin; camp theater productions; love relationships; taking over the kitchen when an angry cook quits, and stepping in to help when her father is hospitalized with a broken neck after an automobile accident.
Despite the difficulties, Sara’s writings, drawings, paintings and watercolors of New Hampshire express the joy she finds in the beauty and majesty of the natural landscape.
Link to more 1940s-New Hampshire Paintings
Family documents also include camp records, drawings and writings, photos, films; a camp-related newspaper produced by Sara and her younger brothers, and correspondence with artists and intellectuals including such as Max Weber and William Zorach.
1940s NEW YORK CITY
In 1941, Sara graduated from college and joined her parents and brothers, who had moved from Boston to New York City.
In her diaries, she describes looking for work, attending the New School for Social Research; shopping, anti-semitism at Gimbels Department Store, and, in 1943, her excitement at taking up oil painting at the Art Students League. In the diaries, she describes painting critiques and encouragement from her teacher, Sidney Laufman. In one entry, she writes that during a painting class, the police kick her, her teacher and classmates out of Central Park, for trespassing. “I believe this was a violation of our civil rights,” she writes. She also reports that the Art Students League paid for a taxi that took her and classmates to complain to the chief of police.
Link to more New York 1940s paintings
The diaries also describe New York street scenes, views from the Number 10 bus; theater and dance performances (Sara writes that she is surprised at Martha Graham‘s heft) and job hunting.
There is correspondence with a college friend in Oregon–a psychologist who works with war veterans experiencing shell shock; difficulty deciding between two male suitors –a social worker (whom she prefers), and a doctor (whom her father prefers). At one point, she breaks up with the doctor; then describes life on a military base; it turns out that she has married the doctor, who is an Orthodox Jew–then accompanies him to Chicago, where he completes a medical fellowship, and she gives birth to her first daughter.
The collection includes many portraits and figure drawings and paintings, – some of which are described and explained in the diaries; several Chicago landscapes and a line drawing of Sara’s baby daughter.
The diaries end with a newsletter from the Albany Jewish Community Center, which includes an announcement that Sara Harris, the wife of Raymond Harris, MD, is teaching art, there.
Link to 1940s artwork-New York
1950s-Albany, NY
In the 1950s, Sara took on the role of wife and mother—keeping house and raising four children in Albany, New York. But she also managed her husband’s medical practice, became active in community affairs, co-founded and directed the national Center for the Study of Aging—all the while teaching art and continuing to draw and paint—often after her family had gone to bed.
Her work from this decade includes still lifes that seem to draw on artists like Matisse, seemingly primitive paintings of her children—some perhaps modeled on the work of Modigliani– and others humorously depicting city gatherings and Halloween. Sara also moved into abstracts: some pure shapes, tones and colors, but others, such as “Sputnik,” from 1957, are based on the world around her.
Link to more 1950s artwork-Albany, NY
1960s
In the 1960s, Sara raised her family, remained active in community affairs, and continued to draw and paint, also venturing into encaustic and etching. Regardless of subject matter, some of her later works from this period tend toward abstraction or even the surreal.
One encaustic, above, appears to be purely abstract but includes the barely visible shape of a menorah; there are several paintings of seemingly misshapen dwellings, but, as seen on the page that follows, watercolors or crayon drawings of Sara’s back yard, Loon Lake and a neighbor’s summer cottage are quite recognizable. The collection also includes numerous pen, ink or pencil drawings and doodles of natural formations and Sara’s family from this time, as well as several paintings verging on religious themes.
Link to more 1960s artwork-Albany, NY
1970s
Sara’s oldest daughter Anita somehow believed Sara quit painting when her third child was born; after Sara passed away in 2016, Anita was surprised to find paintings dated as late as 1976, six years after Sara’s youngest child left home for college. Because some of the works are not dated it is difficult to be certain just which were completed when. But a landscape oil dated 1976 is reminiscent of Sara’s oil landscapes from the 1940s; others introduce elements of fantasy; verge on the surreal; or distantly reference the physical world to experiment in color and shape.
Link to more 1970s artwork-Albany, NY
