Lot 221: Olin Dows (1904-1981)

Val Kill Cottage, The Country Retreat of Eleanor Roosevelt signed and dated 'Olin Dows 1949' (lower left) watercolor on paper 131/2 x 181/2 in. (34.4 x 47 cm.) PROVENANCE Eleanor Roosevelt. John A. Roosevelt, acquired from the above. By descent in the family to the present owner. LITERATURE R.K. McClure, ed., Eleanor Roosevelt, an Eager Spirit: Selected Letters of Dorothy Dow 1933-1945, New York, 1984, pp. 60-61, illustrated Olin Dows, Franklin Roosevelt at Hyde Park, Drawings and Text, 1949, p. 173, illustrated EXHIBITION Franklin Delano Roosevelt Centennial Travelling Exhibition, 1982 The Eleanor Roosevelt Centennial Travelling Exhibition, 1984-1985 NOTES Olin Dows was an American artist, friend and Hudson River neighbor of the Roosevelt Family. He was a Vice President of the Board of Trustees of the American Federation of the Arts and was named Head of the Treasury Relief Art Project in 1935, active in New Deal art projects. In 1939 he painted the Rhinebeck, New York post office murals, and in 1941 painted the Hyde Park post office murals. In 1949, Dows wrote and illustrated Franklin Roosevelt at Hyde Park, Drawings and Text, for which the present watercolor was an original drawing. Eleanor Roosevelt's Stone Cottage was completed in the summer of 1925. Henry Toombs, the architect from Atlanta, Georgia who had built the Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia and Franklin D. Roosevelt worked together as an architectural team and Val Kill was designed in the Dutch tradition of the Hudson Valley.