Marguerite T. Zorach, 1887 – 1968

Born on September 25, 1887, in Santa Rosa, California, Modernist artist Marguerite Thompson Zorach was the eldest daughter William P. Thompson and Winifred Harris:

Her parents were WASPs with colonial roots, affluent and cultured; her father was a successful lawyer. She learned to play the piano and became fluent in French and German. She was also a talented draftsman; this interest and ability came to her naturally (Zorach Collection).

Although much of Marguerite's legacy has been overshadowed by her husband, sculptor William Zorach, she gained critical acclaim in the 1910s and 1920s and is celebrated as an important American Fauvist painter, graphic designer, and textile artist. The Smithsonian American Art Museum, which holds the largest collection of her works, describes her as "an early exponent of modernism in America, employing the bold colors of the Fauves [...] with the striking, and controversial, forms of cubism." Her work is held in several American museums, including the Brooklyn Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Newark Museum, Portland Museum of Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art.

Marguerite's artistic talent became apparent to the Thompson family when she was still a child. However, she also excelled academically and was admitted to Stanford University in 1908. Her time there was brief, as she chose to leave without completing her degree, embarking instead on a journey to Europe in the summer of 1908 to join her aunt, Harriet Adelaide Harris. Known as "Aunt Addie," Harris—a teacher, amateur painter, and friend of Gertrude Stein's—had lived in Paris since 1900. She deeply admired her niece's creativity and wanted her to immerse herself in the vibrant art world of France. By all accounts, she financed Marguerite’s travel, housed her in her Montparnasse home, and introduced her to leading artists and schools—including Picasso, Zadkine, Rousseau, and Matisse.

Adapting to Paris and the French art world was initially a challenge for Marguerite, who found the environment both unfamiliar and intense. But she soon found her footing, gradually embracing the rhythms of her new life and thriving within the dynamic, often daring world of avant-garde art that surrounded her. The next four years in Europe and beyond would prove groundbreaking for Marguerite’s artistic development:

When my aunt informed me that we lived in the famous Latin Quarter, I experienced a little shock of surprise. When I discovered the size of the Latin Quarter, there was another surprise, and an even greater one when I realized that in this awful Quartier Latin were the great universities and Art Schools of France; the lovely old Luxembourg garden with the Medici Palace now used as the Senate Chamber; the Pantheon, the Westminster Abbey of France; the old Cluny Palace with its hoary relics and ruined walls; and  on through a long list of less celebrated but equally interesting places. It is the Student Quarter of Paris, more foreign than French, alive with Russians, Poles, English and Americans. [...] Here you will find living side by side, the girl whose father has made a fortune in oil and has sent his daughter abroad to finish her education and the little girl from Australia who has saved up her pennies for years that she might come and study painting in Paris and who lives in a bare little room, hardly knowing where her next meal will come from, but trusting the God of the Quarter, "Luck." There is a more democratic spirit here in the midst of this undemocratic people than we find in America itself. E veryone meets on the common ground for work, the only aristocracy is that of ability and success. Each one is here for a purpose; the air throbs with industry, enthusiasm and genius. Iris most inspiring; you meet so many who are so much more advanced than you that their attainments are something to look forward to, so many whose work is so far below your standard that you feel you have something to start with and are not discouraged (Burk, 90-91).

Her very first experience was with the open-air market on bd. Edgar Quinet, two blocks away from where she and her aunt lived. She later wrote an article in The Fresno Morning Republican about her initial distaste for the chaos, smells, and grime:

I cannot say that I was very enthusiastic upon my first visit to the market. As an insight into a certain phase of French life it was most interesting, but I did not relish the idea of buying there, even if the vegetables were much fresher and more reasonable than in the stores. The European custom of displaying all manner of eatables on the street, unprotected from the dirt and dust, and even handling by the passers-by, was new and not at all pleasing to me. I had a feeling that everything was dirty, especially the people. Since then I have become acclimated  and resigned to the fact that France and dirt are inseparable (April 18, 1909, 17).

Her visit to the 1908 salon d’Automne was equally unsettling. Initially baffled and put off by the wild experimentation, she came to appreciate Impressionism’s power to evoke life through seeming chaos: 

It was at the Salon d’Automne where I first made the acquaintance of these different branches of art. This Salon has nothing to do with the famous Spring salon. In it all experimentors and art cranks have full sway and it certainly was the queerest exhibition of pictures I have ever seen. I was disgusted at first but in the end found it very interesting. It was among the gay red, yellow and green daubs that I found a few pictures which gave me an idea of the marvelous possibilities of Impressionism. [...] I think one can say they have succeeded, or better still, are succeeding. Close to their canvases, the sky appears a mixture of all colors, a meaningless mess of paint–but step back a little–before you is the same blue sky you see in the other pictures but with a great difference: it is alive, it has atmosphere. It is a sky in which birds could fly, in which things could breathe and grow (The Fresno Morning Republican, April 4, 1909, 1).

In the same article, she cited Henri Martin as one of her favorites—a painter of dreamlike landscapes filled with light and pastel colors who was more interested in creating an atmosphere than a detailed representation of reality. 

She also visited the Louvre and later wrote a lengthy article about the experience, published in the Fresno Morning Republican on January 17, 1909, p. 12. Among the overwhelming number of paintings she encountered, those she admired most included Jean-François Millet’s The Gleaners, Vigée Le Brun’s portrait of herself with her daughter, and—most especially—Constant Troyon’s depiction of a man driving his cattle in the early morning sun.

Despite her aunt's wishes, Marguerite was not accepted into the École des Beaux-Arts and chose not to stay at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, which she found too conservative. Instead, she enrolled in the post-Impressionist Académie de la Palette, directed by Jacques-Émile Blanche from 1902 to 1911. There, she worked with Scottish colorist John Duncan Fergusson, a prominent member of the Salon d'Automne and the artistic director of Rhythm, a periodical active from 1911 to 1913 that championed innovations in art, music, literature, and critical theory across its 14 issues. Rhythm featured several of Marguerite’s drawings in 1911 and 1912.

At the Académie de la Palette, Marguerite became friends with artist Anne Estelle Rice, who had both a romantic and professional relationship with Fergusson. She also met Jessica Stewart Dismorr, with whom she shared a studio. Marguerite and Jessica explored museums and galleries across Europe and spent the summer of 1910 together in Provence. Dismorr would go on to become one of Britain’s foremost women artists, actively engaged in progressive art, literature, and politics. Despite suffering from mental illness, she was a pioneer in four major modernist movements: rhythm, vorticism, postwar modernist figuration and abstraction" (Ashby).

At the Girls’ Art Club, which she visited on numerous occasions, she met American artist Anne Goldthwaite, with whom she explored the bohemian expatriate circle surrounding Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso.

Marguerite was daring in more than one area of her life. She relished breaking away from conventional thinking, especially when it came to her personal freedoms. At the time, it was widely believed that young American women should not explore Paris without the protection of a chaperone. In an article dated December 20, 1908, Marguerite quickly dispelled this notion, describing the ease with which one could attend an "evening musical at the Girls' Art Club in company with one or two other girls" (Burk 2008, 89). She also playfully teased the supposedly scandalized Parisians who watched Girls' Club artists sketching in the streets of Paris or out in the countryside:

I remember reading not long ago in a San Francisco paper how the girls of this [...] American Girls' Art Club had astonished all Paris by taking long tramps and sketching expeditions into the woods of France unchaperoned. Astonished all Paris! Why Paris never even raises an eyebrow when we bold artists brave the dangers of her forests and suburbs all alone. As is a favorite custom of girls here, I have even sketched down along the Seine among the roughest class of workmen and tramps and was never more courteously treated anywhere (Burk 2008, 89-90).

Her desire to explore carried her well beyond the boulevards of Paris, into the broader landscapes and cities of Europe. Like many American women artists of her time, Marguerite seized the opportunity to travel with friends throughout France and other parts of Europe. In April 1909, she traveled to Italy with a friend named Ann and a chaperone, Mrs. Brown. They visited northern Italy, Florence, Venice, Chioggia, and Rome. In August 1910, she spent time in Étaples-sur-Mer, which she described as both picturesque and dirty. That same year, she also visited London, Bruges, and Strasbourg, and in the winter undertook an extended journey with friends through Spain via Bordeaux. In the spring of 1911, she and a friend traveled and sketched across Provence, exploring places such as Arles, Avignon, Nîmes, Les Baux-de-Provence, and Martigues.

During these journeys, she further developed another of her talents—writing. From 1909 to 1915, her engaging travelogues were published in her hometown newspaper, The Fresno Morning Republican, which regarded them as invaluable accounts offering practical insights into the pleasures and challenges of travel abroad.

When she wasn’t traveling, writing, or sketching, Marguerite actively exhibited her work. Alongside Anne Estelle Rice and many others, she presented a piece titled Study at the 1909 annual exhibition of the American Woman's Art Association. She participated again in the 1910 show, held under the presidency of Anne Goldthwaite. That same year, Marguerite’s etching Giselle was featured at the prestigious Salon des Artistes Français, displayed near a miniature portrait of her by fellow Girls' Art Club artist Anna M. Watson. Another Fresno native and Girls’ Art Club resident, Maren Froelich, also had her work shown at both the 1910 AWAA exhibition at 4 rue de Chevreuse and the Salon. The Fresno Morning Republican proudly highlighted Thompson and Froelich’s accomplishments in a celebratory article published on August 7, 1910:

Fresno will be well represented in the 1910 Salon of French Artists in the Grand Palais, two young women from this city having gained admission to this most exclusive of French art exhibitions. The fortunate ones are Miss Marguerite Thompson and Miss Marie [sic] Froelich, daughter of a pioneer of Fresno and Millerton. 

The Salon of French Artists is recognized as the most difficult in which to gain entrance of any of the several held there each year. That two Fresno girls and no less than eleven native Californians have presented specimens which the discriminating French critics considered worthy of acceptance, is a recognition of the highest standard of art in California never before accorded in Paris (3).

Marguerite also had 4 pieces accepted in the exhibition of the American Art Students’ League in 1910. In 1910 she sent etchings that were hung at the Parlor Lecture Club Bazaar on December 8: "Gate of the Sun," "Toledo" "Court of the Mosque, Cordova," "Little France, Strasbourg," "The Tree of Knowledge," "The Baby," "A corner of Old Paris," "Patio de los Naranjos, Cordova," "Calvin’s House, Paris." In 1911, Marguerite continued to exhibit, showing her work at both the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants, where she displayed six pieces.

That March, while studying at La Palette, Marguerite met William Finkelstein—born Zorach Gorfinkel in Lithuania—whose family had emigrated to Cleveland, Ohio when he was a child. According to biographies on the Zorach Collection website, William was “a couple of years younger than Marguerite,” an age difference that, at the time, carried more social weight than it might today. The two quickly formed an amorous relationship—one that reportedly appalled members of Marguerite’s family, who sought to end the romance by urging her to take an extended world tour with her aunt before returning home.

In October 1911, Marguerite and her aunt departed Paris on an epic journey that took them through Jerusalem, Egypt, India, Burma, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, and Hawaii, before finally returning to California in 1912. Intended by her family as a way to separate her from William, the seven-month voyage instead became a deeply formative experience. It “exposed her to new cultures, geographies, and styles of art, which affected her artwork profoundly” (Kennedy 96). Marguerite continued to draw and paint throughout her travels and, despite her aunt’s hopes, kept up frequent correspondence with her beloved William. She also sent multiple articles to the Fresno Morning Republican, sharing her adventures and observations with readers back home.

Marguerite returned to Fresno on April 26, 1912, after a four-year absence, laden with souvenirs—especially textiles—and sketchbooks filled with scenes from her travels. Additionally, she had immediate plans to exhibit her work. In an interview with The Fresno Morning Republican, she remarked, “You know, it is remarkable how many California girls are making their mark in art in Paris […] There are at least 200 young women from the Golden State studying, and many of them have accomplished creditable work” (April 25, 1912, 1). She also shared that she had met up with her friend and fellow Girls’ Club artist, Los Angeles native Minnie Dunlap (Mary Stewart Dunlap), during her travels in China.

Just a few months later, in October, she exhibited her work at the Royal Gallery (744 South Hill Street) in Los Angeles. The show was advertised in a local paper with the bold declaration: “All ye who enter here—be prepared for a shock!” (The Fresno Morning Republican, October 20, 1912, 7). Her faithful Fresno Morning Republican documented the impact of her post-Impressionist style on American viewers, noting, “Miss Marguerite Thompson is the brave painter who has returned to her native state with the dernier cri in the art world” (October 20, 1912, 7). Just one week later, on October 27, they published another article titled, “Marguerite Thompson, Futurist: Her Work Is Winning Attention.” Although she was not a futurist in the traditional sense—eschewing themes of speed, technology, and violence—she was undoubtedly ahead of her time artistically. When asked how she became interested in post-Impressionism, Thompson responded, “Through my love for the decorative and my desire to study color” (22). She also shared her reason for typically using white frames for her paintings:

Since pictures such as mine are so different from the pictures people are used to framing, it isn’t really strange that they should require different treatment. White not being a color (as is gold) forms the best frames for pictures high in key and in pure color, as it does not destroy the balance of color in the picture and brings out each color in its fuller intensity. Black is next best, I think.

In November, she gave a talk on her Parisian studio life at the Parlor Lecture Club, followed in December by an exhibition of her post-impressionist works at the same venue. That same month, she also presented a selection of her etchings at the Harrell & McNulty Art Shop (The Fresno Morning Republican, December 15, 1912, 7).

On December 16, Marguerite left California to join William in New York City. Despite her family’s objections, the couple married on December 24, 1912, both adopting William’s given name, “Zorach,” as their shared surname (Kennedy 96). Their engagement had been announced earlier that month, on December 1, in The Fresno Morning Republican (7), which described William as being originally from Cleveland, Ohio—though it notably omitted mention of his Lithuanian heritage. The announcement also noted that the newlyweds planned to settle in New York, where they would open a shared studio.

By 1913, Marguerite and William Zorach, along with Anne Goldthwaite and other Montparnasse affiliates, showcased their work at the legendary Armory Show, introducing modernism on a grand scale to a stunned American audience:

Although some members of the public misunderstood and even ridiculed her work, Marguerite seemed unaffected. She was brave and clear about who she was and what she believed. She also had William's full support, and they continued to paint in the same studio, helping each other with canvases, with ideas, with promoting their paintings. Although they struggled financially, these were rich, exciting years, and their collaboration nurtured them both. They exhibited paintings in their studio as well as at galleries, and they were at the center of the avant-garde community of American artists in New York (Kennedy 97).

The Zorachs lived for about 20 years at 123 West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, where their New York home became a kind of bohemian salon frequented by artists and writers (Burk 2004, 12–13). They spent summers in New England, and from 1915 to 1918, they summered in Cape Cod, where they taught art classes for the Modern Art School in Provincetown. In 1917, Marguerite taught embroidery and design alongside fellow Girls’ Art Club alumna Ethel Mars, who instructed students in woodblock cutting and printing (International Studio 11).

Often exhibiting together in galleries across New York, the Zorachs were inseparable. One exhibition, held at the Daniel Gallery in March 1918, was reviewed in The Evening World by W.G. Bowdoin. While Bowdoin praised several of William’s watercolors, he remarked that Marguerite’s New Hampshire Family was “[…] perhaps intended to excite a laugh. It does that at all events in its flat treatment” (10). However, he did compliment her hooked rug Eden as “highly decorative.” Despite this acknowledgment, Bowdoin’s review clearly favored William’s work, reflecting the bias of male critics and art world gatekeepers who often deemed him the more serious artist.

In addition to painting, the Zorachs collaborated across various media, including poetry, textiles, and sculpture. Their linoleum and woodcuts appeared in Playboy, a Greenwich Village literary magazine edited and published by Egmont Arens from 1919 to 1925 (The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door). The art world was intrigued by their closeness and the relative success of their partnership. A short article on their relationship appeared in Pearson’s Magazine in April 1919, noting, “It is interesting, this marriage of two artists, both working in form and color, both modern, intensely devoted to their work and to nothing else except each other and their two young children” (F.H. 265). The article describes William as “a Russian Jew” and Marguerite as “an American of New England stock.” The author admires their work, especially the magazine covers they designed for Pearson’s, considering both artists quintessentially modern. The piece also provides insight into Marguerite’s own philosophy of art, including a lengthy quote about her style:

I have no artistic creed or formula. I have no fixed aim to which I am bending every energy. I have made no wonderful or new artistic discovery. Perhaps I have not even a new vision…In so far as my life is rich in emotional and intellectual experiences, actual or in imagination, in so far as I seek for a deeper and more comprehensive grasp of things, in so far I shall have material from which to create. 

Marguerite and William had two children: a son, Tessim (1915–1995), who became an avid collector of pre-Columbian art, and a daughter, Dahlov Ipcar (1917–2017), who enjoyed a successful career as a painter and illustrator. After her children were born, Marguerite focused more on textiles, as the high-value commissions helped support the family financially. Reflecting on their early years of financial hardship, William wrote in his autobiography, Art is My Life:

We survived these years by never spending a cent on anything that was not essential...we saw that there was always money for materials...we made our own canvases...used the stretchers over and over, rolling up the finished pictures. When desperate we painted on both sides of the canvas (cited in Colleary 24).

Despite their financial challenges, the Zorachs were able to purchase a house in Maine, where they enjoyed many happy summers together:

In 1923 my parents were able to buy a farm in Maine for very little, and after that we spent our summers there in Robinhood village on Georgetown Island. Our old 1820 farmhouse was large. My mother papered, painted, and furnished it with antiques which at that time cost much less than up-to-date furniture. She decorated the living room walls with a mural of leaves and animals and nude figures, all done in green. She also put extensive flower gardens in around the house, as well as a large vegetable garden. My father converted an old toolshed into a studio. There were 28 acres of fields and woods, and later my parents bought an adjoining farm of 65 acres, where I now live (Ipcar 2011).

The Zorachs first visited Georgetown Island in 1922 to see French sculptor Gaston Lachaise and his American wife, who were living there in a kind of artists' colony that included painter Marsden Hartley and photographers Paul Strand and Gertrude Käsebier, among others (Weisgall).

Records indicate that sales of Marguerite’s textiles provided the bulk of the family’s income during the 1920s (Burk, Clark). Her works from the interwar period often included autobiographical elements and a “focus on relationships, especially those between male and female, and between parent and child” (Bianco). Through an introduction by Edith Halpert of the Downtown Gallery in New York City, Marguerite and her family even had the opportunity to visit the Rockefellers. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller commissioned an $18,000 tapestry from Marguerite, "a sum that allowed the Zorachs to continue their work as artists and also provided for their two young children" (Pollock 129). The tapestry, titled The Family of John D. Rockefeller Jr. at their Summer Home, Seal Harbor, Maine (1929–1932), took a year to design and three years to complete:

Monumental in concept and scale, Marguerite Zorach’s embroidered portrait, “The Family of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. at their Summer Home, Seal Harbor, Maine 1929 – 1932,” features emblematic references to family members and their recreational pastimes in and around The Eyrie, their Seal Harbor residence. The tapestry is a celebration of the Rockefeller vision that helped shape Acadia National Park and preserve the beauty of Mount Desert Island for future generations (Mount Desert Islander).

In addition to creating tapestries, Marguerite designed clothing, accessories like hats and handbags, and colorful fabric patterns. She served as an officer of the Society of Independent Artists (1922–1924) and was the first president of the New York Society of Women Artists (1925), an organization established to provide exhibition opportunities for women modernists. Like many artists of her time, Thompson Zorach participated in the WPA’s Depression-era projects, painting two murals for post offices in Fresno and one for a post office in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

Marguerite taught watercolor from 1938 to 1939 at the New School for Social Research and served as a visiting artist at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture every summer from 1946 to 1966. She also joined Skowhegan’s board of governors from 1960 to 1968 (Fowler 7 n. 15). When fellow Girls’ Art Club alumna Mildred G. Burrage founded the Maine Art Gallery in Wiscasset in 1957, Marguerite and her daughter Dahlov Ipcar were among the earliest board members. In 1964, Bates College honored Marguerite with an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts.

Marguerite Thompson Zorach remained active and productive until she died at age 81 on June 27, 1968, two years after William’s death. Their legacy was carried forward by their children, who donated many of their parents' works to museums across the U.S. and internationally. The family papers were deposited at the Smithsonian. See also the Zorach collection.

Sources

• Ashby, Chloe. "Radical Women: Jessica Dismorr and Her Contemporaries review – the artists who refused to obey." The Guardian, November 5, 2019. 
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• “Society.” The Fresno Morning Republican, December 1, 1912, p. 7. Newspapers.com.
• Special to The Republican. “Marguerite Thompson Reaches San Francisco; Will Exhibit Paintings.” The Fresno Morning Republican, April 25, 1912, 1. Newspapers.com.
• Tarbell, Roberta K. Marguerite Zorach: The Early Years, 1908-1920. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1973.
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• Untitled article. The Fresno Morning Republican, October 20, 1912, p. 7. Newspapers.com.
• Weisgall, Deborah. “Marguerite Zorach: Georgetown Goes Modern: The Modern Art Movement Meets an Island Community.” Maine the Magazine, July 2011.
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