Catherine Marie Wilkinson

Other Events and Attributes:

• Biography: University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon; Artist and philosopher Jack Wilkinson, was born in Berkeley, California in 1913, and grew up in the Hawaiian Islands. He first came to the University of Oregon to study journalism but switched to an art major, and later served on the faculty in the Art Department from 1941-1968. In his first year teaching at the U of O, Wilkinson started one of the earliest Basic Design programs in the United States, and then became head of the Art Department in 1962. He also served as the head of the Art Department at Louisiana State University from 1968 until his death in 1974. Dave Foster, who was one of his earliest students and later his collegue, named the Wilkinson House, located at the Eugene Millrace, after the innovative painter and thinker Jack Wilkinson to honor his legend.
• Biography: Lithographer, painter. Born in Berkeley, CA on July 2, 1913. Wilkinson studied at the University of Oregon, CSFA under Maurice Sterne, and in Paris. During the 1930s he was a resident of San Francisco, and after 1941 taught at the University of Oregon and Lousiana State University. He died in East Hampton, NY in 1974. Exh: SFAA, 1937 (prize); CSFA, 1939 (solo); Portland Museum, 1945 (solo). In: SFMA; Burns (OR) Post Office. WWAA 1940-53; SS.
• Residence: 1951, Eugene, Oregon; Address:
  2525 Van Ness Street
  Eugene, Oregon 97403
  United States
• Biography: 1990; Jack Wilkinson was born in Berkeley, California in 1913, and raised in Hawaii, the son of a construction company owner. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Oregon from 1932 to 1935, initially pursuing a degree in jounalism but then entering the art program in order to learn how to illustrate an article he had written for the school newspaper. He then moved back to San Francisco to further his studies in art at the California School of Fine Arts from 1935 to 1937, studying principally with Maurice Sterne, eventually becoming an assistant and apprentice of Sterne along with fellow classmates Nell Sinton and Charles Voorhies. In 1937 he was awarded the J.D. Phelan Travelling Scholarship, which would allow him to travel extensively in Europe and view works in major art institutions overseas. At the same time, however, his mentor Maurice Sterne had asked him to be an assistant in his studio for a mural project for the Department of Justice. Consequently he was granted a postponement of travel in order to work with Sterne as well as improve his French prior to departure. Travelling to Chicago, New York, and then on the Europe in 1938, Wilkinson established a studio in Paris, which would become his base of operation when he subsequently journeyed to Italy, Germany, Holland and England. While in Paris, a romance blossomed between Wilkinson and fellow painter Una McCann, who also had a studio in Paris. With Europe on the verge of war, the two painters would return to San Francisco in late 1939. Wilkinson and McCann would marry the following year in California. Perhaps most notable of Wilkinson?s time in Paris was his conversion to the theories and approach to painting of Cezanne and to a lesser extent, Pissarro. Upon his return to San Francisco, Wilkinson entered and won a Treasury department competition for a Post Office mural to be installed in Burns, Oregon. His wife assisted him in completing the mural in the summer of 1941. Upon arrival in Burns to install the finished mural, they discovered that the dimensions they had been given were inaccurate, resulting in considerable on site rework. The mural currently hangs in the main court room in the Harney County Courthouse in Burns. Wilkinson and his wife then drove from Burns to Eugene, Oregon to visit friends. Upon their arrival in Eugene, they found that Lance Wood Hart, an assistant art professor at the university, had died [26 May 1941], and so they stayed in Eugene for the funeral. Wilkinson was then asked if he would be willing to cover Hart's classes for the term. This would be the start of Wilkinson's 37 year tenure with the school. His classes became legendary among his students. He established one of the earliest basic design classes in the United States and his intergration of philosophy, psychology, and mathematics into his classes offered his students an intriguing, broad and intellectual approach to art. While Wilkinson is perhaps best known as a teacher, he was quite talented as a painter, remaining quite active with his own art throughout his life. His earlier canvasses show an affinity for the human figure. Through the 1930s and 1940s, his work was expressionistic and compatible with predominant art concerns of the time. Toward the late 1940s onward, a more highly stylized and abstracted approach appeared, with canvasses executed with spontaneous, energetic and broad brushwork. Later works reveal an increasing interest in landscape painting. Throughout his career, he remained fascinated with mural painting as a venue to explore more complex and complicated themes. He would often paint over previous works many times as the act of painting seemed to hold a primacy above the final result, as well as a place to try out evolving concepts, no matter how successful or unsuccessful. For Wilkinson, painting above all seemed to be a journey of investigation and confirmation of the ideas that he was constantly visualizing and revising. Over the years, he continued to exhibit his work internationally as well as regionally. In 1962, Wilkinson became chair of the art department at University of Oregon. For a variety of reasons, many beyond his control, Wilkinson?s additional duties as the prime administrator for the department proved to be an increasingly untenable burden for him as the 1960s progressed culminating in his resignation from his position in Eugene and subsequent move to Louisianna State University to head up the art department there in 1968. While at LSU, he developed and artist-in-residence program and started an MFA program. Additionally, his teaching had an even more substantial impact upon art students from the more conservative South. He remained in his position at LSU until his death in 1974. A comprehensive retrospective of Wilkinson?s work was exhibited at the University of Oregon in 1990.

Notes:

Biography:
I have been provided with a copy of the death certificate for Lance W. Hart. It shows that he was born on 11 Nov 1891 in Aberdeen, Washington and died on 26 May 1941 at home (1831 University Street, Eugene, Oregon). The cause of death is shown as "hypertension cardio, duration 9 years; renal disease."

The death certificate indicates Hart was a professor at the University of Oregon. Father: Alfred W. Hart; Mother: Emily McClelland Gears (born Kentucky).

State of Oregon State File Number 282; Local Registrar Number 203.

Jack married Una McCann on 21 Sep 1940. Una (daughter of R. J. McCann and Marie Chapin) was born on 15 Feb 1913 in Redwood City, California; died on 6 Mar 2013 in Pays de la Loire, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Biography: Born in Redwood City, CA on Feb. 15, 1913. McCann grew up and attended public schools on the Monterey Peninsula. She then studied at the CSFA and Académie Ranson in Paris. In 1936 she assisted Diego Rivera on murals for the GGIE. In 1940 she married artist Jack Wilkinson and moved to Eugene, OR where she painted a mural in the Kaufman Bldg. She lived in Easthampton, NY until 1986 and then moved to Segré, France where she currently lives. Exh: SFMA, 1937, 1939; CSFA, 1938; Parrish Art Museum (Southampton, NY), 1981; NAD, 1982.
• Biography: 21 Mar 2004; In the 1930s a young art student named Una McCann started hanging around one of the engineering feats of the day, the construction of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. Though, on account of her sex, she was not officially allowed on the work site, McCann cajoled her way past the bridge's safety inspectors and produced hundreds of ink and watercolor sketches of the project and its workmen. A handful of those sketches found their way to Eugene, where they are on display as part of a group show at the Karin Clarke Gallery through April 3. McCann is now Una Wilkinson, 91 years old and still painting at her farmhouse in France. "I am painting all the time really," she said by phone from her home in Segre. "In bad weather I do more still life rather than going outside because it rains so much here, and I can't manage to paint in the rain." Born in Redwood City, Calif., McCann studied art at the California School of Fine Arts. She became Una Wilkinson when she married Jack Wilkinson, a charismatic painter and art teacher at the University of Oregon from 1941 to 1968. They went from Eugene to Louisiana, where her husband died in 1974, and Una Wilkinson moved to Long Island and then to France. During her career she met a number of art world luminaries. She once assisted Diego Rivera with a mural. In Long Island, she moved in the same social circles as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning. Here she painted a mural at the Kaufman's Department Store building, now ShoeAholic. She also assisted her husband with his large mural at the post office in Burns. Painting, she said, is well supported in France. "Even people who run grocery stores attend the local art shows," she said. While she's a fan of abstraction, Wilkinson doesn't care for some contemporary art. "I am not particularly interested in exhibitions that concentrate on animals floating in tanks of water or piles of rocks on the floor," she said. "I have piles of rocks in my house here and there because I like rocks. To put them in an art gallery is nice for the rocks. But to have a whole exhibition of that kind of thing does not hold my attention." Her Bay Bridge sketches, done with a light, sure hand, remain fresh and lively today. Like many drawings and paintings of their era, they combine a modernist fascination with machinery with the 1930s adulation of the workingman. Wilkinson said she sometimes got dangerously close to her subject. One day, without thinking, she walked a high narrow beam from one construction platform to another. "It was only about 75 or 80 feet down to a roadway full of cars," she said. "I looked at the platform ahead of me. Two guys were working on the platform. They sat there frozen. They didn't move. They just looked at me, and I could see what was going through their minds: `Is that fool woman going to fall?' ' Her bridge sketches were previously exhibited in 1986 at the Stanford Museum of Art at Stanford University.
• Newspaper Article: 31 Mar 2013, Register-Guard - Eugene, Oregon; Oregon artist dies at 100 in France Una McCann Wilkinson (1913-2013) died in the early afternoon of March 6th in Segre, France (SW of Paris). She had turned 100 years old on February 15. Born in Redwood, California she studied art at the California School of Fine Arts (later the San Francisco Art Institute). She lived in California about 27 years, then 27 years in Eugene, 6 years in Louisiana, 12 years in New York, and 28 years in France. While in school in San Francisco she painted a large fresco mural in the school cafeteria and did hundreds of ink drawings of the workers constructing the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Many of these were exhibited in the San Francisco Art Museum in 1937 and at the Stanford University museum in 1986. She met her future husband, Jack Wilkinson, in art school in San Francisco. They both received the Phelan Traveling Scholarship (1937, 1938) for travel to Europe to study art. Both were in Europe at the outbreak of WW II. In 1939 Una assisted the Mexican painter, Diego Rivera, as he painted a huge mural for the San Francisco Exposition held on Treasure Island. In 1940 she married Jack Wilkinson in San Francisco. They completed a mural in the Burns, Oregon Post Office in 1941. They began living in Eugene when Jack was hired to teach at the University of Oregon, due to the sudden death of painter Lance Wood Hart. Una continued to paint in Eugene, helped with the development of the Maude Kerns Art Center, and painted the mural in Kaufman's store downtown. Una worked in drawing and painting as she lived in Louisiana and then New York and finally in France. She exhibited her work in 2011 at the Mairie Gallery in Segre, France. A new book was just published of her and Jack's drawings called Jack and Una Wilkinson - Sketchbooks. Una is survived by her daughter Catherine Zerner and grandchildren Rachel and Charles Theodore and a great-grandson, Aaron. Una's husband Jack, preceded her in death in 1974. The Schrager & Clarke Gallery at 760 Willamette Street in Eugene will have a small exhibit of Una's drawings and paintings on Saturday, May 11, from 2:00 - 4:00 p.m. The book Jack and Una Wilkinson - Sketchbooks will also be available. The public is invited.

R. married Marie Chapin. Marie was born about 1874 in Oregon. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Imigration: 1877, Adelaide, South Australia; Official assisted passage passenger lists show arrival in South Australia on 23 Jan 1877 on the Herschel: Adolf (presumably Alfred) Wyser Emilie (presumably Emilia) Wyser Ida Wyser Marie Wyser Otto Wyser Bruno Wyser Elise (presumably Elisa) Wyser The voyage (sequence 77/6) apparently began in Hamburg.
• Residence: 1881, Adeliade, South Australia; From the Sands Directory; Address:
  Regent Street
  Adelaide, South Australia
• Residence: 1882, Adeliade, South Australia; Occupation in the South Australia Directory shown as tanner (page 32).; Address:
  Ifould Street
  Adelaide, South Australia
• Residence: 11 Apr 1882, Adeliade, South Australia; Residence as shown on son Bruno's birth record.; Address:
  Grenfell Street
  Hindmarsh Ward
  Adelaide, South Australia
• Occupation: 29 Sep 1884, Glebe, N.S.W., Australia; Fanny Weyser's birth certificate shows Bruno Wyser is a Tanner.
• Residence: 29 Sep 1884, Glebe, N.S.W., Australia; Occupation (in Sands Directory): Tanner; Address:
  14 Mitchell Street
  Glebe, NSW
  Australia
• Residence: 1886, Sydney, Australia; Occupation in 1886 Sands Directory: Tanner. Surname shown as Weiser; Address:
  Mayes Street
  Leichhardt
  Sydney, NSW
  Australia
• Occupation: 20 May 1887, Glebe, N.S.W., Australia; On Ida Wiser's marriage certificate, Bruno is shown as a Carpenter.; Address:
  Franklyn Place
  Glebe, N.S.W.
  Australia
• Residence: 1888, Sydney, Australia; Occupation in 1888 Sands Directory: Tanner; Address:
  21 Bunn Street
  Sydney, NSW
  Australia
• Residence: 1889, Sydney, Australia; Occupation in 1889 Sands Directory: Tanner. Surname spelled Wycer.; Address:
  183 Elizabeth Street
  Sydney, NSW
  Australia
• Residence: 1890, Sydney, Australia; Occupation in 1890 Sands Directory: Tanner; Address:
  193 Elizabeth Street
  Sydney, NSW
  Australia
• Cremated: 9 Dec 1895, Crematory at Odd Fellows' Cemetery; Cremated (or "incinerated") at 3:00 PM on December 9, 1895. No autopsy performed. The ashes were received by Mrs E. Wyser on 29 Apr 1896.; : 54 y 9 mos; : Cancer

Notes:

According to Beat Hodler:

A Cousin of Bruno Wyser: Catharina Wyser (1826-1901): During many years, she ran the post-office in Niedergösgen. She wasn’t married. She wrote a very varied diary which is today an excellent historical source. In this diary, you find a lot of information about weather, politics, religion, prices, popular medicine and so on. There is also a poem which she dedicated to her cousin Bruno, when he left Switzerland in 1860. In this poem she remembers the good times they had spent together and she expresses also a blessing:

Dem Bruno Wyser ins Stammbuch bei seiner Abreise nach Amerika 1860:
Wenn auf dem Blatt nach langer Zeit
dein Aug einst sinnend ruhen bleibt
dann mög vor deinem Blick erscheinen
das Haus, umgeben von den Bäumen;
In dessen Schatten du einst spieltest
Nach der Scheibe mit der Armbrust zieltest,
Und manche liebe Ferienzeit
So sorglos dich mit uns erfreut

Du willst nun in die Fremde gehen
Wir werden lange dich nicht mehr sehn.
Möge nun in deinem Leben,
Gott viel Glück und Heil dir geben
Und dein guter Engel mit dir gehn

Translated (by Ingeborg Gowans) into English:

For Bruno Wyser : at his departure to America in 1860:

When, after many years, you will return to this page
and recall old times
may you remember the house nestled among the shadegiving trees,
where you used to play, trying bow and arrow,
where you spent many a day, enjoying carefree hours with us..

Now you are off to foreign lands
And we shall not see you anymore
May God grant you good health and wellbeing in your life
May your Guardian Angel walk before you.



According to Beat Hodler:

"I still don't know why Bruno actually travelled to Montevideo, but I guess that his emigration had something to do with the Bally enterprise. His family was related to the Bally family. Bally was at that time one of the very big European shoe producers. Around 1870, Bally tended to expand to South America, whith some difficulties at the beginning and quite a good success in the long run. In the 1870's Bruno Wyser returned to Niedergösgen, where he spent some years before emigrating again (as you know already). In 1873, Elisa Schönhals and Bruno Wyser had a child in Niedergösgen, whose godmother was Emilia Balli. (source: Kirchenbuch Niedergösgen).

Name:
Also known as Bruno Weyser and Bruno Wyser

Buried:
According to the Crematory records from the Odd Fellows' Cemetery (sheet 62), Bruno Wyser died from cancer on 7 Dec 1895 at Lane Hospital, San Francisco. His attending physician was L. C. Lane, and there was no autopsy. Bruno Wyser was 54 years 9 months old. His remains were received by the crematory on 9 Dec 1895 and were "incinerated" at 3:00 PM. The witness to the incineration was James W. Mallady. The arrangements were handled by Union Undertaking Company, and the ashes were "delivered to Mrs. Wyser 29 April 1896." She signed a receipt as "Mrs. E. Wyser, 31 Minna Street."

We have received the cremation record from the California Genealogical Society, with special thanks to Nancy Peterson.

Died:
Cause of death: Cancer. Died at the Lane Hospital in San Francisco, California, attended by Dr L C Lane (Levi C Lane).

Bruno married Elisa Schoenhals on 3 Feb 1869 (German-Evangelistic Church) in Montevideo, Uruguay. Elisa (daughter of Johannes Schoenhals and Elisabeth Christina Ringel) was born on 20 Mar 1841 in Simmersbach, Germany; died on 19 Jul 1910 in 573 Jones Street, Oakland, California; was buried on 20 Jul 1910 in Oakland Crematory. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Residence: 1896; Address:
  56 South Park Street
  San Francisco, California 94107
  United States
• Residence: 29 Apr 1896, San Francisco, California; Address shown on crematory receipt for Bruno Wiser's ashes.; Address:
  31 Minna Street
  San Francisco, California 94105
  United States
• Residence: 19 Jul 1910, Oakland, California; Here for 1 year and 1 week according to Certificate of Death.; Address:
  573 Jones Street
  Oakland, California
  United States