Joane Cromwell - Indian Reservation - circa 1930s Oil on Board P2971

 A vivid, confidently executed landscape painting of Indian land. Art measures 12" x 16 1/4" , frame (with some visible loss of finish in the photos) is 15 1/2" x 19 1/2". Joane Cromwell was born Catherine Joane Strode on November 22, 1895, in the village of Bernadotte, Illinois, near Lewiston. The daughter of Dr. William Smith and Julie (Brown) Strode, she grew up in Lewistown and graduated with honors from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1916. She married Leslie A. Blakely in 1917. Their son Leslie Cromwell Blakely was born in 1918 while Joane was living with her mother in Southern California; the couple divorced in 1922, and it appears that she divided her time between Illinois and California in those years, as evidenced by the 1920 United States Census where she is listed as a resident of Illinois. By 1922, she was a resident of Laguna Beach. During her early years in California, she exhibited under the name Catherine Strode or Catherine Strode Blakely. After adopting the name Joan