Ruth Harwood - Utah's Spiritualist Prodigy

At a Glance

Metadata	Details
Publication Date	2023-10-01
Journal	Utah Historical Quarterly
Authors	Elizabeth Egleston Giraud

Abstract

Writing from a small home in the hills above Berkeley, California, in February 1923, Ruth Harwood described to her father how she had commemorated her mother’s birthday. James Taylor Harwood—Utah’s most prominent artist—had lost his wife, Harriet Richards Harwood, the previous April. Bereft by the death of his wife, James had returned to Salt Lake City with his two younger children after having relocated the Harwood household to California three years earlier.1 Despite the loss, Ruth’s letters contain a celebratory tone, one that reflects her belief that the presence of their mother remained in the family. “You will want to know all the celebration we did for the little mother’s birthday,” Ruth wrote. “Mostly I felt in a mood of rejoicing that she had had a birthday and such a beautiful life and that she had given the gift to me… . Somehow I felt the benediction and the joy that the little mother would have in having me there.”2Ruth Harwood’s expression of thankfulness rather than sorrow belies the deep heartache she felt, one that influenced her work as an artist and poet and prompted her lifelong pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. Her search was guided by a metaphysical belief system known as spiritualism, which appealed to believers who rejected conventional religious institutions but sought to understand the mysteries of the cosmos. Spiritualism was especially appealing to those who had lost a loved one. Harwood accepted the belief that the soul progresses eternally, constantly evolving to slough off the darkness and reach toward the light, a basic tenet of the movement. Harwood’s artistic evolution from commercial illustrator to symbolist artist, coupled with her mystical verse and prose, reflect her growing commitment to use her gifts so fellow seekers could attain the inner knowledge that would lead them to universal love.3 Harwood’s family roots in Utah, her experience with bereavement, and her fateful meetings with artistic luminaries shaped the spiritualist philosophy she sought to share.This article aims to recover the history of an artist and poet and to augment the burgeoning historiography of female artists in twentieth-century Utah. Recent scholarship has explored how Latter-day Saint women artists served as unofficial but committed missionaries to incorporate art in the home and overseas; has shown how artists, curators, and dealers served as both tastemakers and paid participants in the labor market; and has provided new perspectives on the grande dame of twentieth-century Utah art, Alice Merrill Horne.4Ruth was a native Utahn and the daughter of two remarkable artists, but her story is very different from that of her contemporaries—largely because of her parents’ religious indifference and her own spiritualist beliefs. Harwood upends many of the assumptions people hold regarding women in the first half of the twentieth century: she was gay but accepted by her parents, she was sustained by long-term loving relationships, and she was self-supporting. She lived most of her adult life in California but until the 1940s spent enough time in Utah that she became an important part of the state’s artistic scene. Harwood’s spiritualist beliefs and her commitment to disseminating her message through art and poetry were central to her life. Her work thus provides a look at the cultural landscape of Utah through a different lens and opens a new avenue by which to understand how an unorthodox belief system entered the Utah art scene.5Ruth was very much the product of two artistically accomplished parents. Sometimes referred to as “the father of Utah art,” James Harwood was notable as the first Utahn to study art in Paris, the first Utahn to have a painting exhibited at the Paris Salon, and an influential art instructor at the Salt Lake High School and the University of Utah. Born in 1860 in Lehi, James spent his youth working in his father’s saddle and harness shop, hunting, fishing, and trapping in the beautiful environs of Utah County, and drawing, sketching, and painting at every opportunity. In 1887, he met eighteen-year-old Harriet “Hattie” Richards when she enrolled in his Salt Lake Art Academy. Harriet showed promise as a student, and gradually they fell in love, marrying in Paris in 1891. During their courtship Hattie honed her skills as a painter and expressed to James her desire to study art in New York. James discouraged her, fearing that such a venture would sever their relationship.6 Hattie continued to pursue serious artistic study, however, before her marriage. In 1888, while living in Paris with her parents, Hattie joined her fiancé to study at the private Académie Julian and was the first Utah woman to do so. In 1893, Hattie’s Étude represented the only oil painting by a woman artist exhibited in the Utah Pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition.7 Although Hattie set art aside once she married, she developed serious avocational interests in philosophy, astronomy, and geology, thus reinforcing the intellectual tone of her household.8After they married, James and Hattie returned to Salt Lake City and began their family. James painted, taught at Salt Lake High School, and farmed in Holladay on land he acquired in 1905. “My farming was carried on under difficulties,” he wrote in his autobiography, Basket of Chips, but “my love for the farm came from both generations ahead,” referring to his Lehi roots.9 Despite the financial stress, he wrote, “We were a happy family, my dear wife and children. Every day was a holiday to us; a new thrill came each day.”10 James and Hattie established a loving home, one that was creative, cerebral, and tolerant of their children’s exploits. They were immersed in Utah’s artistic milieu and enjoyed the pleasures of country life.The congenial Harwood household provided a secure base for Ruth to cultivate her artistic and literary skills as well as a foundation of open-mindedness that allowed for the investigation of novel belief systems. Considered “a most unusual child,” Ruth was a free-spirited, carefree, nature-loving girl, “perhaps in some ways a little wild, but always gentle, untamed, hair flying the wind, ever eager and impulsive.”11 She was exceptionally close to her father, and her mother gave her eccentricities a wide berth, making for a happy childhood.12 Her teenage years, however, were not as pleasant. Described as an adolescent who exhibited an air of boredom while feeling awkward, diffident, and shy, Ruth retreated into an imaginary world sustained by her poetry. She resisted sharing her poems with others, believing that writing poetry was an endeavor best kept “sacred and undisturbed.”13 A stanza from an early poem she wrote, “Wind Rapture,” expresses her need to escape social conformity: Let me break loose from thisPrison of conventionality thatSmothers me and moveUnfettered through the earth’s And air’s immensity.14During her years as an English major at the University of Utah, Harwood blossomed as a poet and artist. In response to the encouragement of an English professor, B. Roland Lewis, Harwood submitted a poem, “The Shoe Factory (Song of the Knot-Tyer),” for publication after visiting a factory as part of a psychology class studying mental reaction.15 In it, she captured the repetitive motion of manufacturing work, presented by the narrator not as drudgery but as a “joyous song.” Within a couple of years, the poem and two others were published in the prestigious Poetry Magazine and included in an anthology of the best American and British poems of the year.16 Ruth won other poetry prizes at the University of Utah and later stated that “the annual poetry prize of the University of Utah had been given to me—just for the happy songs I had woven together for myself. That was the first time my songs had ever reached out and brought me happiness.”17Although Harwood’s confidence as a poet took time to develop, her deep desire to paint and draw manifested itself from an early age.18 The family was described as splitting into two camps during family outings in the mountains: Ruth’s brothers and younger sister accompanying their mother in “field study,” and Ruth and her father “picking out a scene to be put on canvas.”19 She contributed her artistic skills to the student art guild at the University of Utah by providing illustrations for Pen, “the little art magazine of the school,” the Utonian, the school’s yearbook, and posters for the university’s dramatic club productions. In 1918, the Salt Lake Herald reported that she donated her services to the Red Cross in Salt Lake by making posters to advertise the organization’s downtown store; the Herald described her as “one of the recognized artists in the west ever since the days of her high school life.”20 After feeling like a social outsider during her teens, Harwood had not only achieved public recognition for her creative talents but managed to carve a space for herself among her classmates who shared her artistic sensibilities.In 1920, the Harwoods moved to Berkeley, seeking a change and wider artistic circles. Ruth had recently graduated from the University of Utah and enrolled in the University of California to study commercial art and obtain a teaching certificate. She continued to write poetry and in 1921 won the Emily Cook Chamberlain prize for a volume of verse entitled Songs from the Lyric Road.21 Some of the poems have a somber tone, while others are fanciful and playful. Lyric Road includes one of her most charming poems, “Vagabond Song”: But O! I have a heart that gaily sings And feet that swiftly dance, and wealth untold For I have eyes to catch and soul to holdThe gold of sunsets and the jewels of spring.And I find gems in all the stars that shine;And dazzling diamonds strung on spider’s lace;And glistening water on the water’s face;And full red rubies sparkling on the vine.22As she told a California reporter, the poem “typifies her own self.”23 The publication of Lyric Road and Ruth’s honor in winning the Chamberlain prize occurred a few months prior to Hattie’s death in April 1922, close to the end of the happy but brief interlude the Harwoods experienced in California. When read with the knowledge of the sadness that was about to beset the family, “Vagabond Song” seems to portend the close of Ruth’s carefree days. Upon the loss of his wife, James returned to Salt Lake City with his two younger children; Ruth remained in Berkeley to make her way in the world. She was twenty-six years old.Following Hattie’s death, Ruth wrote to her father almost every day, adopting a cheerful tone intended to ease his despondency.24 But despite the upbeat tone of her letters to James, Ruth deeply grieved her mother’s death. Several of her poems reveal the depth of the loss she experienced and are poignant and prophetic of the spiritual journey she ultimately embarked upon. For example, on the last birthday Hattie shared with her daughter, she wrote to Ruth: Birthday NoteMy darling little girl This is your day and from the neverending stream of life you have come to helpbrighten the sorrow and give joy to humanity. From pain of motherhood I give thee tothe world, love it, help it to your highesthope. Your mother25A stanza from Ruth’s poem “Mother Song” sounds like a response to her mother’s message: So I shall go into the world,Beloved—My Mother—And far and far shall take the fervent songsThat I have fashioned from my Love for youAnd sing them dearly till The careless throngsShall turn and hearken to This love I know.26No work of Harwood’s expresses the feelings of grief prior to her spiritual awakening as directly as her poem “Wisdom,” with her accompanying pen and ink illustration. Several sources suggest that she produced both the poem and the drawing shortly after Hattie’s death.27 Her verse does not describe the spiritualist journey she eventually undertook but instead depicts the sorrow common to all who have lost a loved one. In “Wisdom” Harwood writes metaphorically of three forces: love “was a transient stay,” fame “fled elusively,” and death “hovered gloomily near where a loved one lay,” so that “nevermore my [musical] notes can take their early carefree ways.”28 “Wisdom” indicates her struggle to come to terms with her grief in the interim of Hattie’s passing and her spiritualist investigations. Although life would not be the same without her mother, during the 1920s Ruth encountered people and experiences that provided an absorbing, if circuitous, path that allowed her to resolve her questions regarding loss and her purpose in life.It took a few years before Ruth’s metaphysical beliefs came into focus. In the meantime, the years from 1923 to 1930 were a productive time of illustrating, writing, and teaching, during which she encountered several literary and artistic celebrities, traveled abroad, and lived in New York City. By 1923, Harwood had fallen in love with a woman named Lois Atkins, and together they explored the hills and valleys above Berkeley, created a garden at the small house Harwood had purchased, and participated in various theatrical ventures.29 Ruth’s letters to her father indicate that she and Lois were very much in love, that he accepted Ruth’s sexual orientation, and that he was fond of Lois.30Until 1926, Harwood worked as a commercial artist and lived with Lois. Little remains in her archived papers of illustrations she prepared for corporate purposes, but examples of the hand-painted greeting cards she designed as part of a business she started with Lois are abundant. Her use of poster paint on colored card stock resulted in bright, saturated images outlined in gold ink and demonstrate the bold, graphic style she employed in the 1920s.31 The charming and whimsical cards portray natural scenes or cozy dwellings and convey glad tidings for various holidays.32 The greeting cards were a source of income for Harwood for many years.Artwork illustrating the poems Ruth wrote provides additional examples of her drawing ability. The cover for Songs for the Lyric Road (1921) uses pen-and-ink techniques to portray a road leading to the horizon, illuminated by an oversized sun.33 A work entitled “In Sunlit Spaces” is very colorful, featuring a willowy nude woman delineated in pen and ink, dancing on grass in front of a large tree with yellow leaves. The details of these images, including the cavorting figure and the finely detailed foliage executed in various pen-and-ink techniques, were typical of 1920s graphic art. Although Ruth is mentioned in several sources as having come to art naturally with two artistic parents, little evidence remains that she pursued drawing or painting as a fine art, unlike James and Hattie. Her papers include a few lovely watercolors of landscapes, but she used art primarily for illustration and later to express her spiritualist beliefs.She was also an art educator. By March 1926, Harwood was working as the art supervisor of the State Teachers’ College in Silver City, New Mexico, and the next year as a design instructor at the University of Utah. Her teaching approach is documented in the articles she authored for School Arts Magazine, which demonstrate both her skill and her creativity. The magazine’s editor, Pedro J. de Lemos, published submissions from teachers throughout the country who presented a range of projects using a variety of techniques, materials, and media. The projects Harwood described reflected the balance of creativity and technical expertise that School Arts Magazine supported. She instructed readers how to teach a unit on stained glass, construct an Easter lily basket, decorate a cover for a clock, design a graphic border of trees, and examine the underlying geometry of flowers to improve still-life drawing. For an issue devoted to color, Harwood augmented a short article explaining the components of color with a play written in verse, “Color Fantasy,” in which she anthropomorphizes colors. “Mother Gray” instructs the and as to their on the color and them when they When and to to each and that the for always be each I love you all so much all to making And all of you are beautiful with The approach Harwood used to children regarding a as as the color her whimsical and to the artistic of During her two years as an Harwood was in School Arts Magazine and de Harwood in the her and published a of her Harwood had her University of Utah teaching A Salt Lake article published in of that year several in she won the prize for the best she was writing a to be and on the she described in School Arts Magazine, and in the of she had her father to Paris to study In a from Harwood a and a happy the and women of the in she had New York City as a of the Poetry of a through her with of Berkeley, the poet of She reported on the poetry luminaries she most and and literary who her because she won the her with Berkeley and in the literary milieu Harwood was very much a part of the artistic world of her Harwood told the that she would to Berkeley and work through the Her life was and one in which she was not only as a in her but also on a Harwood did not the of in she moved to New York City, where she participated in poetry and enjoyed the of the she had at the University of Utah. Although she expressed at in the of New literary world, her had to from and to one of and spiritual a Harwood the change to an she experienced when studying art in Paris prior to her to New that she had “a from art to art for From about 1930 Harwood devoted herself to for and spiritual or she the brief of how it Harwood’s and to find and in her life. Spiritualism is a used to describe metaphysical belief that in the were the of the to have the to as the and their loved using to at and through Spiritualism in the and abroad, with American a home first among social and ultimately those who rejected the and of did not but instead to their own spiritual The on resulted in a of many with almost all with with loved and all with could with or together and later break Spiritualism also the belief that the soul through a of with the soul ever to to the than use the of and as the promise or of in the as to lead a life on to after of was by an named who in New York City in by of mystical a New York her and in they the the of the that mysteries could be by known as who the and spiritual to reveal This knowledge the of it had the to was the of thus from in that it was by and in which could only be by a spiritualist were and to is also from Spiritualism by of was an who explored and Her to the belief of coupled with of her to change from to that of the of and religious with on with loved the of that only is manifested can be and the that the soul progresses appealed to Harwood for several in a and tolerant Harwood was to new that to questions of Spiritualism her a path to understand and her mother’s death. it gave her a deep foundation on which to her art and poetry. Several of her early and poems her of and indicate her pursuit of a to understand the that her need to years before she immersed herself in some Harwood wrote, “In I as some of and years of me the in such during all time a of artistic evidence of A stanza of one of her published poems, included in Songs of the Lyric Road indicates her belief in a universal presence and is coupled with her of conventional religious is through remains his little for and out on of would be would to every Harwood her father to Paris, where she many of the she had experienced as a she her in a of poems, and entitled Paris Although Ruth little in a about the of in she told a after a that her from art to art for came while she was a student in Her from Paris reveal a spiritual For days has been the of I to the of a I to be and for And has come the of the is the that I have so but not until The with all the first of the are to me are inner that some day with I shall the of one of the many scenes she included in her small reflects or the belief that a or presence to the mysteries of the also the that the will find gradually through a of in the Harwood her from commercial illustration to using her creative gifts for and sharing spiritual was Harwood’s with the Ruth however, that her and the of her artistic They met about 1930 through Harwood’s of poetry in Born in in New was a figure in and it as an art Harwood, had a and a She was to unorthodox beliefs from an early from intellectual who at her parents’ in New and the of began her in the and world of where in milieu she a of ultimately with the of using her art to a spiritual In experienced an during a in Upon an for featuring the of she was so that the she had been in throughout the world and used as an to and luminaries of various when in she her from a or took from a in a of two met a time for She had experienced the of her cultural in the because of a with her but by the early was and she and had their was living in a in a small which she or referring to of Harwood and had a on one and remained in each until Harwood’s death in In her autobiography, Harwood for that the referring to she had under the of the of That was a of to the school she had established with several years The at on and included a of and artists known as the From the in the in the to at two A from Harwood and especially her that need the had provided the for those as experienced the as a Harwood her with as high toward which she had been for many years began to take and out A new of design expression began to come to her in a full of Harwood lived with for several months in the early her to the of the a in the change she experienced in her artistic and honed her spiritualist beliefs. Although Harwood had been on an in terms of herself as a poet in literary when she met the Harwood to the world of and use her creative gifts to the deep feelings of her soul with the spiritualist were in the but the she experienced in Paris in coupled with the of and her of fellow began to in Harwood’s work in the early Harwood’s design style in the illustrations she contributed to first of in of almost one poems about love, in the of and poetry did not but Salt Lake reported on the out of of Harwood’s with The poems were written in verse, and as a Salt Lake they much of the and spiritual that her in these

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5406/26428652.91.4.05