Swans

 

Jessie Arms Botke

  1883 - 1971 (biography)

c. 1930  

color block print 

13 3/16 x 15 1/8" image 

pencil, lower right 

under 50 

pencil titled and inscribed "Botke Prints" 

 

fine cream laid paper 

published 

Jessie and Cornelis Botke, Botke Prints 

CAAL132 

SOLD

Jessie Arms Botke is known for her decorative colorful, intricate paintings of birds, a subject she also used for her color linocuts and woodcuts. A native of Chicago, Jessie Arms Botke was a painter, decorator, designer and printmaker who specialized in birds and landscapes. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and then traveled Europe for a time before returning to New York where she found a job at Herter Looms. While on the staff she designed a series of tapestries for the McAlpine Hotel in New York and helped paint murals for the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Other commissions included a peacock frieze for the Billie Burke house and panels for the EI Mirasol Hotel in Santa Barbara. She married artist Cornelis Botke and in 1919 they moved to California, first Carmel and in 1927 they moved to Santa Paula, near Santa Barbara where F. Morley Fletcher had been hired to teach color printmaking in 1923 at the School of the Arts. Jessie and Cornelis collaborated on a number of their color block prints in the Arts and Crafts style, signing them “Botke Prints”.