AMoCA Collection | Untitled, oil on canvas, 25”x12.5”, 1970
RAiR | 1967-68
Barbara Latham †
Barbara Latham (1896-1989) was born in Walpole, Massachusetts and lived in Taos, Roswell and Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband, Howard Cook, another RAiR artist in residence. Together, they helped launch the RAiR program over a decade during the winter months starting in 1967. They shared Donald Anderson’s home studio during the RAiR years. “Cook and Latham seemed to have had an extremely happy and productive time in Roswell. The compound had not yet come into existence when they first arrived; instead they lived in a small house adjacent to the Anderson property…” (‘The Roswell Artist-In-Residence Program: An Anecdotal History’ by Ann McGarrell and Sally Anderson; 2007:16)
Barbara studied at the Norwich Free Academy and graduated from Pratt Institute in 1919. Her early career in New York involved illustrations for ‘Forum’ magazine and the ‘New York Times’ Sunday magazine. Barbara discovered Taos, New Mexico in 1925 and used the people and landscapes for her illustrations, lithographs and wood engravings. She is well-known for her children’s book illustrations, including ‘Maggie’ selected by the American Institute of Graphic Arts as being one of the best books representative of the 1945-50 period of book illustrations. Her paintings of the New Mexico landscape are well regarded and she solo exhibited at the Witte Memorial Museum and Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, and was collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.