Queer Places:
Green-Wood Cemetery
Brooklyn, Kings County (Brooklyn), New York, USA
Dorothea A. Dreier was born on December 8, 1870, in Brooklyn, New York to
German immigrant parents. The second of five children in a close knit,
socially progressive family, her siblings include the social reformers and
suffragettes Mary E. Dreier and Margaret Dreier Robins. However she was
closest to her youngest sister,
Katherine S. Dreier, fellow artist, patron of
modern art and cofounder of the Société Anonyme, an organization dedicated to
the promotion of modern art in the United States. Her sole brother, H. Edward
Dreier, followed his father into business and managed the family investments.
Of all the Dreier sisters, Dorothea is the least well-known and there is
scant information about her artistic career. It appears that she began her
formal art training with John Twachtman and William Merritt Chase, although
accounts disagree as to whether it took place at the Art Students League or
the National Academy of Design. In 1904 Dorothea and her sister Katherine
began studying with the painter Walter Shirlaw, with whom they developed a
close friendship. Both sisters also traveled abroad frequently as the family
maintained close ties with their German relatives and they combined these
visits with trips to museums and galleries throughout Europe where they
studied the works of the Old Masters as well as more contemporary artists. As
evidenced by her series of oil paintings of Dutch weavers of 1908, Dorothea
was greatly influenced by Van Gogh's early paintings of rural Dutch peasant
life and she spent long periods abroad living and painting in Laren, The
Netherlands. Her later paintings depicted landscapes, both in The Netherlands
and the Adirondacks, as well as a series of New York street scenes.
Unfortunately, during a 1913 sojourn in Laren, Dorothea contracted
tuberculosis. She remained at Saranac Lake, a renowned treatment center in the
Adirondacks from late December 1913 to sometime in 1916. During her
convalescence, Dorothea remained actively involved in the arts as she
continued to paint and draw and supported her sister Katherine's work at the
Cooperative Mural Workshop, a short-lived combination art school and workshop
that focused on the decorative arts.
In 1920, Dorothea supported Katherine's decision to champion modern art and
made generous financial contributions toward the establishment of the Société
Anonyme, where Dorothea's first solo exhibition took place in 1921. This was
her only solo exhibition prior to her untimely death in 1923. In the spring of
1925, Christian Brinton of the Brooklyn Museum of Art organized a memorial
exhibition for which Katherine Dreier privately published a limited edition
catalogue.
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