In our modern age, where every person is armed with a camera and computer, you’d think that we would know more. How is it possible that one of the greatest American artists of the last quarter of the nineteenth century has only 24 locatable works out of 88 that were on display in her final exhibition, and potentially hundreds more she made?

Sarah Paxton Ball Dodson (American, 1847 – 1906) was born to Quakers in Philadelphia, PA. Her father, Richard Whatcoat Dodson, was an illustrator, who believed that women should not work as artists, and therefore refused to teach his daughter. She waited five years after his death to enter the Pennsylvania Academy of Art. Soon Dodson was living in Paris, her works regularly shown in the competitive Paris Salon. Despite suffering from what is regularly described in contemporary literature as “fragility,” which inhibited her ability to paint for long stretches, Dodson travelled extensively and completed major commissions for public and private collections. Her work was the centerpiece of the American galleries the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889 (i.e. the same event that gave Paris the Eiffel Tower). And, Dodson was subsequently asked to paint the monumental murals for the Palace of Fine Arts and the Women’s Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. When she died in 1906, Dodson’s brother Richard — my hero, albeit a tragic one — spent the rest of his life holding exhibitions in Paris, Berlin, London, Philadelphia, and New York to promote her work. His efforts were largely unsuccessful, probably resulting from a combination of the First World War and subsequent seismic shifts in art taste. So, Richard donated some of Dodson’s more important canvases to major American museums, where only one is on public display. The location of the vast majority of Dodson’s oeuvre is still unknown, unlocated, and forgotten. Two years ago, in a minor East Coast auction, I discovered and funded the restoration of her work Meditation of the Holy Virgin (1888). (More on that later.) Ever since, I have gathered more information on Dodson’s meteoric career and the whereabouts of known works. In sharing what I have learned, perhaps more will be discovered, dusted off, and put on display.

I am indebted to two scholars. The first and most thorough is the scholar and Curator Barbara Dayer Gallati, who wrote “The Paintings of Sarah Paxton Ball Dodson (1847-1906)” for The American Art Journal in 1983 while still a Doctoral Candidate. Second, I am grateful to John E.D. Trask, who wrote “Sarah Ball Dodson: An Appreciation” in 1911, a few years after the the artist’s death, American Studio Magazine.

Less than five years after enrolling in arts school, Dodson was exhibiting at the Paris Salon. She began studies as private student of Christian Schussele (French/American, 1824-1879) at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Today, Schussele is best known as the design of the United States Medal of Honor. Dodson began working with Schussele just as he was diagnosed with a debilitating illness. Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) would fill in for Schussele when the latter was too weak to tutor Dodson.

From Pennsylvania, Dodson moved to Paris, where she studied privately with the monumental history painter Évariste Vital Luminais (French, 1821 – 1896), who appears to have been a friend of her mentor Schussele. Dodson then matriculates at the Académie Julian, which was distinct for allowing women to study with world-class artists, even as the official École des Beaux Arts did not. She became close with Jules Joseph Lefebvre (French, 1835 – 19111) and the less remembered Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel (French, 1851 – 1913).

Dodson’s first publicly-exhibited work was L’Amour Ménétrier (1877) in the Paris Salon of 1877 as “Number 724” of 3,554 paintings shown in the Salon. The work was unusually ambitious for a woman of the era. Typically, women were relegated to the non-figurative sections of the Salon, specializing in still lifes, animalier, and floral works. Dodson was among the and influx of women graduating from the Academie Julian who pushed the expected limits placed upon them by custom and bias.

The painting as subsequently sent to Philadelphia for an exhibition where a local critic, Edward Strahan, wrote:

“What could be more unexpected than that a quiet lady of the Quaker City, imprisoned during early life in the straitest-laced tradition, should suddenly bloom-out, after a short resident in Paris, into a full-blown Louis Quinze spirit, fit to decorate with Boucher-like cupids the bedstead carved by [Charles] Boule!…” (Edward Strahan, The Art Gallery — Exhibition of the Philadelphia Society of Artists,” Art Amateur, Vol. IV (December 1880), 5.

The next known work from Dodson was similarly ambitious and multi-figural: The Invocation of Moses (c. 1882). It is inspired by a dramatic battle described in the Book of Exodus 17, between the Children of Israel, led by Moses, and the people of Amulek. As they fight, whenever Moses hands are raised, Israel prevails. When his hand grow heavy and Moses rests, Amulek’s side progresses. Therefore, Aaron and Hur stand on either side of the Prophet to keep his hand “steady until the going down of the sun,” securing victory. Whereabout of the original painting are unknown; but, the oil study was gifted by Richard Ball — Dodson’s Brother — after her death.

The following year, Dodson was 43 years old, and created her breakthrough work: The Bacidae (1883). In subject and style, it was a departure from previous known works. “Bacidae” is plural the historical bacis or bakis: female prophets and oracles who, from 700 to 500 BCE, were central to Greek life. People would make offerings to the bacidae, who would consult the entrails of animals and stars to dispense predictions, wisdom, and cures.

Dodson shows the Elder bacis sitting on a marble throne with a younger apprentice alongside. On the the trípous — a ritual three-legged stool — is a freshly disemboweled, upturned bird. As the senior bacis voices the interpretation of what she sees, the younger dramatically recoils.

This is a tour de force of figurative competence by Dodson, combined with a mature and dramatic interpretation of classical culture. The work placed her immediately in the upper echelons of academic artists of her time, including Jean-Paul Laurens and William Adolphe Bouguereau. It was first shown at the Paris Salon of 1883, then was sent to New York, where Dodson became a major draw at the 1884 Annual National Academy of Design Competition. (Charles M. Kurtz. “National Academy Notes.” New York: 1884, 82.)

As her star rose, in Europe there were increasing demands for Dodson to return to the US. The recent Centennial led Dodson to paint the monumental The Signing of the Declaration of Independence in the State House, Philadelphia, Fourth of July, 1776 (1885). The finished work was more than 10 feet long and contained 25 figures. While the work does owe some debt

Dodson, as well as all the people viewing her painting, would have been familiar with John Trumbull’s painting of the same subject from some sixty years earlier. While Dodson does owe some debt to the composition, which she has reversed, it is clear that her image is much more dynamic; each of the figures exhibiting individuality without seeming contrived.

Dodson promised to gift the painting to Philadelphia as long as city officials agreed to hang it permanently in Independence Hall, where the event took place. This proviso caused leader to include a group of local historians who, after deliberations, rejected Dodson’s painting on grounds that not all of the 25 figures depicted were present and signed the Declaration on the same day. Deliberations continued for more than 30 years, with one letter, written by her brother six years after Dodson’s death reading:

“I presume nothing yet has been decided about the Declaration of Independence. I have seen several newspaper articles disputing the statements of the older historians that any signatures were attached on the 4th of July, but if that is the ladies sole objection the mere dropping of the date would make the picture fit the case, for signatures were attached at various dates, and in the informed manner portrayed by my sister.”  (Richard Dodson, letter to J.E.D. Trask, September 18, 1911, Archives of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.)

The painting was never accepted by the city. To make matters worse, according to contemporary accounts, at some point between 1911 and 1920, the painting was damaged by fire, although it is not clear how extensively. Its current location is unknown.

In 1887, Dodson had sailed back across the Atlantic, this time to Brighton, England where she would live for the rest of her life. There she painted the ethereal Les Etoiles du Matin (The Morning Stars) (1887) was accepted to the Paris Salon. It appears to be something conceived for a much larger scale, and could have possibly been an early study for monumental murals made for the 1892 World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago.

Dodson was responsible for making a now lost painting, Pax Patrieae (1891) installed as part of an architectual elements in the three-story Women’s Building. (The building was demolished only a few years later.) For the Exposition, Dodson painted the monumental Meditation of the Holy Virgin (1899), which, until recently sold at public auction, was missing for more than 100 years. In fact, the strikingly similar Under the Weeping Ash Tree (1900) painted the year after, was often misidentified as the work shown in the Columbian Exposition.

At some point in the 1880s, Dodson travelled to Italy. These two virginal painting, for me at least, are clear evidence of her encounters with Italian Quattrocento artists, especially Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430 – 1516).

In some writings about Dodson, there is discussion of her becoming a Pre-Raphaelite artist. That infers Dodson had some relationship with Jean Everett Millet, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, et al. But, I was unable to find any meaningful personal connection between these artists. I don’t believe Dodson knew them. If anything, they all share a desire for an alternative visual language the pre-dated the compositional spatial formulas established by Raphael and subsequently built upon by the European academy. Here Dodson channels Bellini, centering the beautifully and naturalistically painted figure in a surreal, unrealistic, and symbolic setting.

Dodson’s work at the World’s Fair was a critical success; but, it came with severe physical costs. Over the next 17 years, she remained in Brighton, England. Contemporary visitors to her studio report that Dodson would paint for a few minutes and, exhausted, lay down for several hours in order to recover strength. All her life, she had been described as “fragile” or “weak.” So, it was no surprise to many when she died in 1906 of what one doctor described as heart failure at the age of 69.

For the final years of her life, Dodson had been working on a monumental painting, Le Berceau (1900-1906) left unfinished in her studio, of angels preparing for the return of Jesus Christ.

Following her death, Dodson’s brother Richard organized a series of exhibitions in Brighton, London, Philadelphia, and New York, the latter with the help of the influential Goupil Gallery, for which a catalogue was produced. (You can read the full text here.) It lists some 88 works, including a large number of landscapes, which are beautiful, evocative works that seem to borrow from the same kind combination of observed naturalism and invented symbolist atmosphere. These landscapes seems to have been the most successful sales at the exhibitions, leaving Richard with a large number of important figurative works. These he eventually gave away to institutions throughout the United States. Today, only 24 of those 88 are known.