Della, 1860 – 1940, and Lillie Garretson, 1860 – 1939
Plan as if you were to live forever, and then work as if you were to die to-morrow – Motto of the women's Century Club publication, (National Cash Register Company): Associate Editor, Etta Garretson (The Semi-Weekly Era, March 4, 1903, p. 4).
Della (sometimes spelled Dillie, Dilla, or Delia) and Lillie Garretson were identical twins known as “the Garretson Girls” who remained close their entire life. They had a brother and two sisters, one of whom (Etta) graduated from Smith College in 1900 and pursued a specialization in literature at the University of Chicago.
Born in Logan, Ohio on April 12, 1860 to Allan T. Garretson from Ohio and Hannah Booth from Staffordshire, England, they were raised in Detroit, Michigan where they returned for the last thirty years of their life. Della specialized in portrait, genre, and landscape painting, while Lillie specialized in both painting and ceramics.
Sometime in 1894, Lillie and her younger sister Etta took up suite of rooms in Buffalo, where Etta attended high school before she left for Smith College in 1896. Della, on the other hand, pursued her studies in New York City at the Art Students' League and the National Academy of Design, where she received honorable mention for her painting from life in 1896. Lillie taught classes in ceramics and staged exhibits in their Buffalo studio. Della exhibited in the Buffalo Society of Artists Exhibition of 1898 and 1899. The two sisters also sketched in Connecticut, Maine, and in Williamsville, New York, where they had a cottage and taught classes on out-of-door figure work.
Whereas Lillie stayed in Buffalo, Della left to study in Paris in the Fall of 1900, visiting Holland, Germany, Italy, and studying at the Sloyd Seminarium in Sweden. She most likely stayed at the Girls’ Club on her arrival, but opened her own studio in the fall of 1901, listing her address as 7, rue Léopold Robert, a stone's throw from the Club. Lillie came to join her after exhibiting ceramics in the Pan-American Exposition.
In February 1902, Della formed part of the hanging committee for the AWAA show at the Girls’ Club, where she showed "An October Afternoon," and "The Village.” Later that year, she exhibited two paintings at the Salon des Artistes français, "Autumn Day" and "Portrait of Miss G" (probably a portrait of her sister). She identified her principal teachers as Dutch-American painter Leonard Ochtman and Spanish-French painter Leandro R. Garrido.
Della and Lillie returned the U.S. in early September 1902, where Della opened a studio in New York City and Lillie returned to Buffalo.
Lillie joined her father in California in 1903, where she taught painting and drawing in a private school in Berkeley.
According to the Buffalo Evening News, since her return to New York City, Della, “has been represented in all of the eastern exhibitions in the past year. [...] she is engaged in illustrating, having been for some time under contract by one large firm besides having a large field in special work. She lives in a charming art and literary circle in New York. Both sisters are literary as well as artistic and speak French with fluency” (July 29, 1905, p. 3).
Della moved to Detroit in the summer of 1906, with a studio in the Fine Arts building. The year before, she had joined the newly founded (1903) Detroit Society of Women Painters (Sculptors were added to the title in 1930), becoming its Vice President in 1907. Her fellow artist of the Paris Girls’ Club, Letta Crapo Smith, was President, but according to The bulletin of the Detroit Museum of Art, Smith was in Europe for most of that year:
In the absence of the president, much of the actual work devolved upon Miss Della Garretson, the vice-president, and it is to her untiring energy that the credit of this fourth and best annual exhibition is due. Her influence is felt in many of the pictures in the exhibition. She found her subjects in and around Detroit, an in fifteen small pictures, she plainly shows that it is unnecessary to ransack the country round for subjects, when there are so many within the confines of this city (9-10).
Lillie joined the Society in 1908.
Della and Lillie, who had given up her position in California, traveled to Italy in 1909 where they painted on orders and commissions, returning to the U.S. from Naples in November. In August 1911, they both sailed for Belgium, where they resided for a year in Bruges, traveling to Paris when necessary. In 1912, Della was admitted once again to the Paris Salon, this time the Salon de la Société des Beaux Arts, where she showed “Marché aux chiffons in Bruges.”
In late May 1912, the two sisters returned to Michigan, where they built a home near the village of Dexter, pursued their art, and were actively engaged in supporting women artists:
Both of the sisters served in the various offices of the organization, except that of president, as long as they were active.They exhibited with the Society regularly, with Della's last showing being at the mid-winter J.L. Hudson exhibition of work by the Detroit Society of Women Painters and Sculptors in 1940. She was eighty years old then and died a few weeks later (dswps).
Neither Garretson married and they died within a few months of each other, around their 80th birthday (Lillie on October 19, 1939 and Della on February 27, 1940). Della’s obituary provides a few more details on their activities:
[...] the sisters had been virtually inseparable, and the similarity of their lives was emphasized by the fact that they devoted themselves to painting. Both of them were members of the Detroit Society of Women Painters and Sculptors. They exhibited their work in Detroit and in the Salons of Paris [ed: only Della showed at the Salons]. They jointly owned three acres of land on the Huron River between Dexter and Ann Arbor, and helped to build the house which they occupied there for twenty years. They drove about the country making sketches and their home was filled with their work (Detroit Free Press, February 28, 1940, p. 19).
