GERALD CASSIDY

Gerald Cassidy was born in Covington, Kentucky in 1869. Widely known as a Southwest painter, he was active in Santa Fe for most of his career, gaining recognition for his light-drenched and luminous portraits and landscapes.

Cassidy grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and first studied art at the Institute of Mechanical Arts while still a child. After receiving further training at the Art Students League in New York in the 1880s, he became a successful lithographer and began working with a number of high-profile clients in the city. A subsequent period in Denver, Colorado working as a lithographer for various publications was cut short when he experienced life-threatening health issues, and was forced to relocate to an Albuquerque sanitarium in 1898 in order to improve his condition. Drawn to the area’s imposing landscape in addition to its various communities, he began painting Southwestern subject matter in an art deco style shortly after arriving, and began his career depicting scenes that could be reproduced as postcards. Eventually he and his wife settled in Santa Fe in 1912. There, he fell in with local artists and arts administrators with his work becoming a staple of local art despite being one of the few artists of European descent there. He also began a successful career as a muralist during this time.

In 1915, Cassidy was awarded the gold medal for a commission of large-scale murals at the Panama-California International Exposition in San Diego. The following decade he traveled throughout Europe and North Africa, meeting some of the region’s most important artists such as Pablo Picasso. Returning to the U.S., he continued to work as a canvas painter and muralist until his accidental death from toxin poisoning while working on a Federal Building in Santa Fe. He died in 1934 at the age of 45.

Cassidy’s works are housed in museums and private collections nationally and internationally, including the Smithsonian Institute, Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, San Diego Museum, City Art Museum in Baroda, India, and the City Art Museum in Berlin, Germany.