Marguerite T. Zorach, 1887 – 1968

Born on September 25, 1887, in Santa Rosa, California, Modernist artist Marguerite Thompson Zorach was the eldest daughter of wealthy lawyer William P. Thompson and Winifred Harris. 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 1909 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 avant-garde art world of France. Supporting this vision, Harris covered Marguerite’s travel expenses and used her connections to introduce her to influential artists and schools, including Picasso, Zadkine, Rousseau, and Matisse. The next four years in Paris would prove groundbreaking for Marguerite’s artistic development.

Upon arriving in Paris, the young Marguerite went directly to the Salon d'Automne, where vibrant canvases by Henri Matisse, André Derain, and Maurice Vlaminck stood out among the two thousand works on display. While many Salon visitors were shocked by these so-called Fauves, the budding twenty-one-year-old artist "[...] gloried in what she saw. Something new was in the air [...] These paintings, particularly Matisse's, stirred her independent nature and questioning mind" (Kennedy 95). At the Salon, she also encountered the work of John Duncan Fergusson, with whom she would soon collaborate (Colleary 24). Like many other artists, Thompson Zorach listed her Paris address as 4, rue de Chevreuse.

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 also became friends with artists Anne Estelle Rice, who had both a romantic and professional relationship with Fergusson, and 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).

Marguerite found traveling in Europe exhilarating, often writing articles about her experiences for her hometown newspaper, the Fresno Morning Republican. In an article dated December 20, 1908, she described Paris's Latin Quarter as "the Spot in All the World Where Genius Most Do Congregate and Where the Democracy of Achievement Has Freest Reign" (Burk 2008, 89).

During this period, it was widely believed that young American women should not explore Paris without the safety of a chaperone. However, Marguerite quickly dispelled this notion, describing the ease and freedom with which one could attend an "evening musical at the Girls' 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).

In Paris, Marguerite met American artist Anne Goldthwaite, with whom she explored the bohemian expatriate circle surrounding Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso. Alongside Anne Estelle Rice and many others, Marguerite exhibited her work at the 1910 annual exhibition of the American Woman's Art Association, where Goldthwaite served as president. Marguerite’s etching Giselle was displayed at the 1910 Salon des Artistes français, 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 showcased her work at the 1910 AWAA exhibition at 4 rue de Chevreuse and at the Salon des Artistes français. The Fresno Morning Republican celebrated Thompson and Froelich’s achievements in Paris with a proud article published on August 7, 1910.

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, she met William Finkelstein, born Zorach Gorfinkel. The two quickly formed a close relationship.

In October 1911, Marguerite and her aunt left Paris to embark on a world tour. They visited Jerusalem, Egypt, India, Burma, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, and Hawaii before returning to California in 1912. This seven-month journey, intended by her family to distance her from William, "[...] 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 intentions, corresponded frequently with her beloved William. She also sent articles to the Fresno Morning Republican, sharing her adventures with readers back home.

Thompson arrived in San Francisco in April 1912 with 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.

By October 1912, Thompson was exhibiting her work in Los Angeles, where 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 late 1912, 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 on December 1, 1912, in The Fresno Morning Republican (7), which described William as originally from Cleveland, Ohio, though it omitted his Lithuanian heritage. The announcement also noted that the newlyweds would settle in New York.

By 1913, Marguerite and William Zorach, along with Anne Goldthwaite and other Montparnasse affiliates, were living in New York. They all 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. 
• Bianco, Jane. “Marguerite Zorach—She Achieved Balance in Her Life.” Maine Arts Journal, Summer 2019.
• Binckes, Faith. Modernism, Magazines, and the British Avant-garde: Reading Rhythm, 1910-1914. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Bowdoin, W.G. “The Zorachs Jointly Show at Daniel Gallery.” The Evening World, March 30, 1918, p. 10. Library of Congress, Chronicling America.
• Burk, Efram L., ed. Clever Fresno Girl: The Travel Writings of Marguerite Thompson Zorach (1908 - 1915). University of Delaware Press, 2008.
• Burk, Efram L., "The Graphic Art of Marguerite Thompson Zorach." Woman's Art Journal, vol. 25, no. 1, Spring-Summer 2004, pp. 12-17. JSTOR.
• Clark, Hazel. "The Textile Art of Marguerite Zorach." Woman's Art Journal, vol. 16, no. 1, Spring - Summer 1995, pp. 18-25. JSTOR.
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• F.H. “Mr. and Mrs. Zorach: Artists.” Pearson’s Magazine, vol. 40, no. 6, April 1919, p. 265. Google Books.
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• “Fresno Artists Are Given Recognition.” The Fresno Morning Republican, August 7, 1910, p. 3. Newspapers.com.
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• Hoffman, Marilyn Friedman. Marguerite and William Zorach: The Cubist Years. Hanover, NH: Currier Gallery of Art, 1987.
• “How Things Look to Mr. and Mrs. Zorach: Artists.” The Butte Miner, February 25, 1917, p. 33. Newspapers.com.
• Ipcar, Dahlov. "My Family, My Life, My Art." Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc. 2011. 
• Kennedy, Kate. Maine's Remarkable Women: Daughters, Wives, Sisters, and Mothers Who Shaped History. Rowman & Littlefield, 2016, pp. 92-102.
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• Nicoll, Jessica and Roberta K. Tarbell, Marguerite and William Zorach: Harmonies and Contrasts. Portland, ME, Portland Museum of Art, 2001. 
• Nicoll, Jessica. "To Be Modern: The Origins of Marguerite and William Zorach's Creative Partnership, 1911-1922." Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc. 2011. 
• "Rockefeller Tapestry Talk Planned." Mount Desert Islander, August 18, 2017. Lifestyle
• “The Part Played By Women”: The Gender of Modernism at the Armory Show. 
• “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.
• Tarbell, Roberta K. “Review: Marguerite Zorach: An Art-Filled Life.” Essays by Jane Bianco, Betsy Fahlman, and Cynthia Fowler, Farnsworth Art Museum, 2017.
• 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.
• “Zorach.” The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920-1925. Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
• Zorach family papers. Smithsonian Archives of American Art. 
• "Zorach, Marguerite T." Biography courtesy of the Caldwell Gallery, InCollect.
• Zorach, William. Art Is My Life. Cleveland, Ohio: World Publication Co., 1967.