arts department of the
St. Petersburg Junior
College. Mr. Dodd is
showing in the member’s
group six oil paintings
and nine watercolors.
Among the oils, two
pictures in the opinion
of this reviewer stand
out as the best painting
this versatile artist has
Mark Dixon Dodd
Tempera, 13½ x 16½ inches.
Theodore Coe, Tampa, Self Portrait, 1924.
Oil on canvas, 18 x 23 inches.
ever done. One is “Self
Portrait”, simple, direct,
hurriedly done. One of
the hardest subjects
an artist undertakes.
In it Mark has caught
something of himself
that we all know…”
Theodore Coe was,
in his time, a wellknown
American
i m p r e s s i o n i s t ,
today he is almost
forgotten. A friend
of the American
impressionist John
Henry Twachtman,
Coe exhibited widely
in Boston, New
York and Florida,
s p e n d i n g h i s
summers on Cape
Cod and winters
in Tampa. In
1926 he moved
permanently to a
studio in Tampa.
In 1934 Coe was
working as an artist for the WPA,
and in 1937 he restored a portrait
of Colonel John Williams, co-founder
of the city of St. Petersburg, and
presented it to the city.
In 1957 the Museum of Fine
Arts in St. Petersburg presented
a retrospective of
Coe’s work. Lee
Malone, director of
the Museum, said of
Coe: ”The rediscovery
of Theodore Coe as a
genuine American
impressionist--one
of that small early
band who were
much admired by
their peers but never
quite successful with
the public brings the
reward of belated
satisfaction….
It was, in fact,
in the middle
nineteen thirties
that I had first
visited his Tampa studio to see them.
In these vivid landscapes, especially
the tropical scenes of Florida, Coe
challenges the usual limitations
of the thick oil medium with an
immediacy more like the brilliance
and dash of watercolor.”
Catherine Stockwell was perhaps Florida’s most prolific
impressionist artist. Born Catherine Haynes in DeLand in
1895, her father, a DeLand pioneer, had a grocery store
on Woodland Boulevard. She attended Stetson University
for seven years studying art under landscape artist,
and first professor of art at Stetson, Harry Davis Fluhart.
Catherine Stockwell, DeLand. Self-portrait, Me, circa 1910.
Oil on canvas, 11½ x 15½ inches.
16