McGuffey Moments

Martha Cochran Beard: More than just a Name

STEVE GORDON, ADMINISTRATOR

Past women artists are finally emerging from their male dominated shadows. It is timely this year’s student capstone project, Confronting Greatness: A Celebration of Women Artists is shedding light on this marginalized aspect of art history. When readers think of American women artists, more specifically notable regional artists, luminaries such as Elizabeth Nourse come to mind. Locally, Oxford has produced a surprisingly significant number of capable women artists, including Annette Covington, Caroline Scott Harrison and more recently, Lydia Wiepking.

Beyond the accomplishments of these academically trained women artists existed a group of self-taught, avocational women painters who also contributed to the genre. Limited by convention and circumstance from entering most professions other than teaching and textiles, talented women found painting, wood carving and ceramics conventional places to showcase their skills and accessorize their homes. Cultural norms, at least those largely set by many professional men, allowed some “lady painters” to indulge themselves in noncontroversial, modest forms of expression such as sewing, painting, music and gardening. Linda Nochlin, in her seminal 1971 essay "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists," recounts how during the 19th century real women’s work was to serve the family, not the artist herself. Along this vein, a male woodcarver wrote in 1897, “The invasion of the crafts by women has been developing for years amid irritation and injury to the workmen.” For most men, women’s work meant serving the family and husband, and remaining outside the workplace. Martha Cochran Beard (1868-1929) exemplifies those Oxford women who, while certainly not major genre artists, nonetheless left a body of work that warrants greater appreciation and discussion. Martha Cochran was born in Butler County and married William Beard, a noted local stock breeder. The Beards purchased the McGuffey House in 1905 and lived there until the early 1920s. While in residence, Martha Beard painted a generic landscape that passed down through three generations of the Junk-Baer family before returning to the McGuffey House in 2011. There is no mention in the written record of Martha Beard’s artistic endeavors. The 1910 and 1920 censuses list her as having no profession. Still, the painting provides tangible evidence of her self-taught if modest artistic talent.

Martha Cochran Beard, Landscape with Watermill, ca. 1905; oil painting on canvas. Donated by the William Junk and WIlliam Bear families, decendants of the artist.

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