Dulah Evans

Dulah Llan Evans Krehbiel (1875 - 1951)

Three Ladies at an Open Window
14" x 17" August 1920
recently aquired by The National Museum of Women in the Arts
Washington, DC

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Dulah Llan Evans was born Feb. 17, 1875, to pioneer residents of Oskaloosa, Iowa, David and Marie Ogg Evans. She was brought up (along with her sister, Mayetta, and two brothers, Walter and Carl) in a low rambling house of many rooms which was reminiscent of the homes of Llanidloe, Wales, where her father was from. David Evans, a well-educated man, was the architect and builder of the Evans Building, which stands to this day on the main street in Oskaloosa. He saw to it that his children also received a good education. Dulah attended Penn College and graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago. She did post graduate work at the Art Students League in New York,

where she won many first place awards in illustration classes under the instruction of Walter Appleton Clark.

She also studied at the Charles Hawthorne School in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and at the New York School of Art under William Merritt Chase.

This was the “Golden Age of Illustration” (1865 - 1917) and Dulah was part of it.

from 1903 through 1905 along with other well-known artists such as Pauline Palmer, Walter Marshall Clute, and Louis Betts. Becoming a successful commercial artist, Dulah illustrated covers for several publications, including Ladies Home Journal, Harper’s Bazaar, and Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly.

Photography was an important tool in Dulah’s works. She made many trips southwest to New Mexico from the years 1900 to 1905, photographing Native American subjects that would later be used as the basis for her paintings and prints.

"Indian Home, Laquna Pueblo," 1927 Lithograph

the 1927 Etching "New Mexico"

and the 1927 etching "Palm Springs."

Dulah left the Tree Studio in 1906 to marry Albert H. Krehbiel, a fellow classmate from the Art Institute of Chicago. Albert was awarded an American Traveling Scholarship from the Art Institute in 1903 and, having spent three years studying at Academie Julian in Paris and traveling throughout Europe, had accepted a teaching position at the Institute while still overseas. In 1907, he reduced his schedule to teaching summer sessions only and undertook the awarded commission to design and paint the wall and ceiling murals for the Illinois Supreme and Appellate Court Buildings in the state capitol of Springfield (the murals were completed in 1911.) Dulah was Albert’s only assistant, performing the duties of designing costumes, modeling, and researching information.

As with any husband and wife artists of the time, Dulah and Albert frequently painted together and often painted the same subject. They each had a high regard for the other’s work and Albert, unlike many men of his day, was proud of his wife’s artistic career and success.

From 1910 through 1915, Dulah worked out of her new “Ridge Crafts Studio” in Park Ridge,

A painting of Evans, “Baby Krehbiel,” was featured in the Herald Newspaper in 1915. Evans’ “career” as a model had just begun as he accompanied his mother, father, and dear aunt Mayetta on trips to California from 1916 - 1920

and to New Mexico in 1923. While his father painted the beautiful and wondrous landscapes, his mother painted Evans and his aunt. Dulah’s works would later be exhibited back in Chicago at The Arts Club, where she was a founding member.

It was in California that Dulah began painting in the modernist style. She created works that were more introspective in nature and which had spiritual overtones. She became interested in the organization of multiple figures, often using groupings of three (perhaps to reveal a spiritual synthesis) in surrealistic mountain landscapes.

Dulah created different tensions with each canvas by the placement of subject figures juxtaposed to their rocky surroundings. Regarding her work, “Polama Valley,” Hi Simons, critic for The Arts section of The Touchstone Magazine (1922; Brooklyn, New York), wrote:

“(the painting is) spontaneously accomplished. Its’ color-tone is of unbroken refinement tat contrasts agreeably with a certain rawness in some of her previous work. The correspondence between the lines of the mountains and those of the figures in the fore is subtle and sure; the trees unify the composition, the whole canvas is disposed with grace and convincing logic.”

Dulah left Park Ridge for New York in 1930, hoping to further her career as a modernist painter.

It appears that she was successful in establishing a market for her artwork there at the Salons of America and the Society of Independent Artists. Her stay in New York was short, however, as she and her sister were called to Iowa to attend to the severe damage that a tornado had caused to the Evans Building. It took a full year for the sisters to complete the repairs.

She returned to Studio Place, Park Ridge, Illinois in the 1930’s and created beautiful works such as

“Mountain of the Blue Moon” in 1934

and “Water Falls” in 1938.

Her sketch book from the 1940’s includes two drawings (possibly designs for posters) related to the theme of war. She continued to paint her modernist landscapes throughout the rest of the decade.

Albert, Dulah’s partner in art as well as in marriage, died in 1945. As he had requested, Dulah and Evans scattered his ashes along the banks of the Des Plaines River. It was here that Albert had found so many exquisite motifs to paint over the years. In his memory they planted an evergreen pine to mark the place that they believed he would have chosen for his long rest.

Dulah’s first grandchild arrived in 1950, bringing much joy in what was to be her last year. She died in 1951 at the age of 75. She managed to keep her creative independent spirit alive through the years of the Great Depression and the two World Wars. Her spirit lives on in the art work she created from her early charming illustrations to her self-revealing modernistic landscapes. We get a sense of a woman of humor, of spirit, and a woman ahead of her time, strong in her own convictions and remaining true to herself and her art.