WILNA HERVEY & NAN MASON: BELOVED PIONEERS OF THE WOODSTOCK ART COLONY

By Bruce Weber

This essay is written In anticipation of the Historical Society of Woodstock's summer exhibition Making Her Mark: 50 Women Artists of the Historic Woodstock Art Colony, which includes work by Wilna Hervey, Nan Mason and other artists drawn from the Historical Society’s fine art collection.

Eva Watson-Schutze (1867-1935)

Wilna Hervey, c. 1918

Platinum print

Woodstock Artists

Association and Museum

Alexandrina Robertson Harris (1886-1978)

Professor J. B. Whittaker, c. 1920

Watercolor on ivory

Smithsonian American Art Musuem

 Wilna Hervey and Nan Mason were two of the most beloved artists of the historic Woodstock art colony.(1) Wilna, who was 6’ 3” and weighed in the range of 350 pounds, was known as Willie, and lived life with a child-like joy. She was born in San Francisco in 1894. Shortly thereafter the family moved to New York to be closer to the real estate holdings her mother inherited from her two unmarried aunts. Growing up Hervey developed an interest in acting, and took painting lessons with Alexandrina Robertson Harris and John Barnard Whitaker in Brooklyn. In 1917, Hervey enrolled in drawing classes at Winold Reiss’ studio in Greenwich Village, and under his tutelage she developed into a fine draughtsman.  It was around this time that she also developed a tempestuous relationship with the artist Karoly Fulop that would continue off and on for years.

Unknown Photographer

Winold Reiss, c. 1920

Winold Reiss (1886-1953)

Turtle, 1920

Crayon on paper

Brinton Museum

Wilna Hervey (1894-1979)

Monteyo, 1931

Charcoal on paper

Springville Museum of Art

Reiss was born in Karlruhe, Germany. He was raised in the Black Forest where he was the pupil of his father, the illustrator and landscape painter Fritz Mahler Reiss. He came to the United States in October 1913 and settled in New York, where he quickly established a reputation as an interior decorator. On a trip to Montana in 1919, Reiss began to create portraits of Native Americans. In later years he made likenesses of African, Asian, and Mexican Americans, as well as figure compositions and western and imaginary landscapes. His vibrant images became widely known in the 1920s and 1930s when they appeared on posters, menus, calendars, cards, and advertisements produced by the Great Northern Railway.

Illustration by Winold Reiss for

Rivka Stein, The New Negro, 1925

Witold Reiss (1886-1953)

Woodstock, 1916-1924

India ink and colored inks

on illustration board

Reiss was also closely connected to the Harlem Renaissance, creating iconic portraits of the important Harlem Renaissance writers Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, and others. The scholar Marion Grant has noted that beginning in the late teens Reiss’ portraits “synthesized the formal concerns of modernist composition and color with an absolute reverence for accurate renderings of individuals.”(2) The bold colors and flat, angular forms of his pictures, such as Woodstock, derive from his training in Germany in the style of Jugendstil, the German branch of Art Nouveau.

Winold Reiss (1886-1953)

Jim Twaddell, c. 1920

Pastel on paper

Woodstock Artists Association

and Museum

Former Twaddell House

(Now the Garden Café)

Unknown Photographer

Wilna Harvey, Art Students League, 1918

Woodstock Artists Association Archives

Earle B. Winslow (1884-1969)

The Woodstock Bus, c. 1921

Woodstock Artists

Association and Museum

For the summer of 1918, Reiss moved his art school to Woodstock. Hervey joined the class and managed to rent the loft of a barn for $12 for the summer. Her teacher encouraged her to join the Art Student League’s summer school. According to the historian and author Joseph P. Eckhardt, she studied with Henry Lee McFee, who was assisting Andrew Dasburg with his class in outdoor figure painting.(3) During the course of the summer she met Eva Watson-Schutze (who took her photograph in the half light of her barn loft), Eugene Speicher, Charles Rosen and Earle B. Winslow (who included her in in his painting The Woodstock Bus).

Photographs of Toonerville Trolley

Alfred Cohn (1897-1972)

Wilna Hervey and Nan Mason, 1927

Gelatin silver print

Woodstock Artists

Association and Museum

In 1919, Hervey was hired to play Katrinka in a series of two-reel live action comedies based on the well-known comic strip Toonerville Trolley, which was syndicated in several hundred newspapers around the country. Her character had superhuman strength but limited mental capacity and could lift a trolley off its track. Dan Mason played the eccentric and irascible skipper who pilots the old trolley, and he became Hervey’s mentor and close friend. The series, which obviously had a lot of comical tricks up its sleeve, was shot outside of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. In 1920, Mason decided to buy a house near the studio, and his daughter Nan came to keep him company. Soon after Willna and Nan developed a romantic relationship. After the initial series ended in 1921 Dan Mason went out to California and arranged to make a group of new pictures where Toonerville became Plum Center and the rural characters that lived there. After that ended in 1923, Hervey sought more film work but found it hard to

come by.

Eugene Speicher (1883-1962)

Drawing of Our Farm (Wilna Hervey and Nan Mason’s Bearsville Home), 1940s

Graphite on paper

Woodstock Artists

Association and Museum

In the spring of 1924, Hervey and Mason settled in the Woodstock hamlet of Bearsville on the four and a half acres Hervey had acquired a few years before. They lived on the funds Hervey received from a trust set up by her family in her name. At first they resided in a shack which had no electricity or indoor plumbing till they acquired a farmhouse close by. Knut Hamsen’s novel Growth of the Soil then inspired them to buy and work the land of the nearby Treasure Farm. pictured in a drawing by Eugene Speicher, a close friend of the women, who also dedicated this picture to them. The farming did not go as planned and so they leased part of the farm to a local farmer. Eventually Hervey owned more than 80 acres of property in Bearsville.

Unknown Photographer

Home of Ruth Hart Eddy,

Anna Maria Island, Florida

Gelatin silver print

Private Collection

Beginning in the late 1920s, Hervey and Mason spent increasing amounts of time away from the colony. They spent a number of winters in Carmel-by-the-Sea in California, where they were impressed by the burgeoning art colony there. They showed their works in local exhibitions, and cultivated friendships among the artists, including with the photographer Edward Weston. In 1926, Hervey and Mason traveled to Europe, visiting Paris, Marseilles, Florence, and Venice, and in 1934 they began to spend winters in Anna Maria Island on the west coast of Florida, drawn there by their wealthy friend Ruth Hart Eddy, who had a local estate there.

By 1935, Hervey’s finances were depleted. She tried to establish a career as an actress in Hollywood, but all she could muster was a small role in the Three Stooges film A Pain in the Pullman. She then tried to make a go of it in the Broadway theatre but no significant roles showed up. To make ends meet Hervey and Mason sold their farm. The new owner permitted them to return to the lower farm and the house they had lived in earlier. Nan started a successful business selling candles, some of

which she designed for clients’ table decorations, that she marketed at various stores.

Wilna Hervey (1894-1979)

Village Green, 1946

Ink and gouache on paper

Wilna Hervey (1894-1979)

Woodstock Post Office, 1945

Historical Society of Woodstock

Wilna Hervey (1894-1979)

Fishing Off a Pier, c. 1960

Ink, wash and oil on paper

Wilna Hervey (1894-1979)

Playing on Beach, 1972

Painted enamel on copper

Woodstock Artists

Association and Museum

Wilna had an artistic breakthrough following the end of World War II, when Henry Lee McFee urged her to abandon the drawing style she had learned from Reiss and develop her own vision. Working in watercolor as well as enamel and mixed media, she developed a child-like folk style and pictured local sites, such as the village green and post office, and the surrounding landscape. She created related works in Florida.

Peter A. Juley and Son

Nan Mason, 1934

Gelatin silver print

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Nan Mason was almost as tall but not close to being as hefty as Wilna Hervey. She was said to be relentlessly cheerful. Among other things, Hervey and she were known for throwing the largest and wildest parties in the art colony, including “Full Moon” parties, which followed in the wake of the end of the Maverick Festivals in 1931 that had been held for sixteen summers in nearby West Hurley.

Nan Mason (1896-1982)

Along the Hudson River, 1924

Historical Society of Woodstock

George Bellows (1882-1925)

North River, 1908

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Nan Mason (1896-1982)

View of Treasure Farm, n.d.

Nan Mason (1896-1982)

The Boats, Kingston, n.d.

Historical Society of Woodstock

From the start Mason made a more concerted effort than Hervey to pursue an artistic career. In the summer of 1924 she studied privately with George Bellows. Her painting Along the River was inspired by his series of views of the Hudson River from the vantage point of the far west side of Manhattan. After Bellows’ death in early 1925 she studied landscape painting with Charles Rosen, who became a close friend, and regularly began exhibiting her landscapes of Woodstock and Kingston. Eventually she backed away from these subjects due to a lack of sales, and possible jealousy on the part of Hervey - seemingly the outgrowth of Hervey‘s failure to seriously pursue her own artistic career.(4)

Nan Mason (1896-1982)

Rondout Ferry Slip, 1932

Gelatin silver print

Historical Society of Woodstock

Nan Mason (1896-1982)

Urban Abstraction with Guitar, 1960s

Painted Enamel

Nan Mason

Geese, 1960s

Enamel painting on copper

Woodstock Artists

Association and Museum

In the 1930s, Mason took up photography. She was probably stimulated by the serious interest which developed in this medium in Woodstock during the course of the decade by Konrad Cramer, Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Emil Ganso. In the 1960s Mason finally attained some artistic success. After taking Joan Pond’s enameling course at the Woodstock Guild of Craftsmen, she began to create small enamel paintings of various subjects, including animals and urban views. The paintings were praised by fellow artists, especially Eugene Speicher, who encouraged her to keep at it.

Unknown Photographer

William Pachner, c. 1945

Gelatin silver print

William Pachner (1915-2017)

Holacaust, 1944

Illustration for Colliers, 1944

Former Home of Carl Walters, Juliana Force, and William Pachner,

Ohayo Mountain Rd., Woodstock

In the years ahead, Hervey and Mason were friendly and supportive of the younger artists who arrived in the town. They helped William Pachner and his wife assimilate into the community following their move to Woodstock in 1945. Pachner decided to settle in Woodstock after he learned that all the members of his family had been exterminated by the Germans in World War II. He quit his commercial career and resolved to devote himself completely to painting. In the early 1940s Juliana Force (by now the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art) purchased the Ohayo Mountain home of ceramicist Carl Walters, and hired Nan Mason as the construction supervisor, garden designer, and groundskeeper. When Force sold the property a few years later the Pachners purchased it.

Franklin Alexander (1925-2007)

Portrait of Nan Mason and Wilna Hervey, c. 1955

Historical Society of Woodtock

In 1955, the painterc Franklin Alexander and his artist wife Pia acquired a house that Hervey and Mason owned. As a token of their friendship and appreciation Alexander painted the portrait of these two beloved figures of the art colony. Hervey died in 1979, and Mason in 1982. They left their Bearsville house to the artists Andrée Ruellan and John W. Taylor, and bequeathed much of their personal art and those of many fellow Woodstock artists to the permanent collection of the Woodstock Artists Association.

(1) For an excellent study of the art and lives of Wilna Hervey and Nan Mason see Joseph P. Eckhardt, Living Large: Wilna Hervey and Nan Mason (Woodstock, New York: Woodstock Arts, 2015). To view a short film by Steven Blauweiss on Hervey and Mason, with an enlightening narrative by Letitia Smith, go to the link https://youtube.com/watch?v=__LGDK654y0&feature=shared.

(2) Marion Grant, Diverse Reflections: Portraits by Winold Reiss. Pittsfield, Massachusetts: The Berkshire Museum, 1997.

(3) Echardt, p. 22.

(4) Ibid., p. 92.