Robert L. Joki | OHS Exhibits: Oregon Originals: The Art of Amanda Snyder and Jefferson Tester | Oregon Historical Quarterly, 107.3

OHS EXHIBITS

Oregon Originals

The Art of Amanda Snyder and Jefferson Tester

by Robert L. Joki

WHEN AMERICAN ART TOOK its first monumental leap into the "modern" at the landmark Armory Show in New York City in 1913, two teenagers were quietly developing their individual artistic talents in the railroad and sawmill town of Roseburg, Oregon.

Amanda Tester (1894–1980) and her younger brother Jefferson (1899–1972) were probably unaware of the controversy the Armory Show caused in the New York press and with the public, as young European artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Vasily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Edvard Munch joined forces with some of America's pioneers in modern art — such as John Sloan, Walt Kuhn, and Arthur B. Davies — to mount an art exhibit that would rock the foundations of American taste and culture.

Throughout their lives, Jefferson Tester and Amanda Snyder would pursue similar but separate paths to find their respective places in this same world of international modernism. Their stories can be told through their differences, but they should also be marveled at for their similarities.

Both stories begin in the public school system of Roseburg, Oregon. Amanda said that she became serious about her artwork at age nine while in the third grade. By the time of her marriage and move to Portland at age twenty-two, she had created some fine early works. Jeff's early work impressed his teachers; and, after graduating from high school, he was able to study at a San Francisco art school for one year. Snyder's move north and Tester's move south would provide a far greater difference than geography and would continue to define their individual artistic paths throughout their lives.

Snyder pursued her vision in Portland by taking some courses at the newly formed Museum Art School. Her life as a homemaker — and eventually a mother — was never at odds with her desires to develop her talents as an artist. Her husband, Edmund Snyder, provided a simple but comfortable and stable life for the family. After Tester's year at the San Francisco School of Art, he returned to Portland and joined the art department of the Oregonian, a job he held until 1926.

Amanda Snyder, Trees — West Hills, 1944, oil on canvas, 20" × 16"

Collection of Brian and Gwenyth Booth

In 1925, both Snyder and Tester studied painting with an accomplished traditional-style English portrait painter, Sydney Bell, who had recently emigrated from London. It was the last time they would be under the same academic influence.

In 1926, Jefferson Tester quit his newspaper job and moved east to join the mainstream of American art education, first with a year at the prestigious Chicago Art Institute and then on to New York to study with Jonas Lie and others. He opened a commercial art firm and received commissions from the most prominent magazine companies of the day, including Time magazine. His paintings were exhibited in Chicago and New York to much acclaim. In 1944, his one-man show at New York's Babcock Gallery brought him to the attention of influential critics. He exhibited a painting in the "Critics Choice" show at the home of American modern art, the New York Armory, and New York Times art critic Howard Devree selected that painting as one of the ten best in the show.¹

Jefferson Tester, New Orleans Jazz Band, ca. 1950, oil on board, 24" × 36"

Collection of Harvey and Jody Klevitt

Tester left New York intending to paint the world, and he eventually landed in France, where his one-man Paris show at Andre Weil Gallery in 1952 led to glowing reviews in many of the leading French art journals of the day.

Les Arts, 18 Jan.: "We are accustomed to consider that there can be no painting, I mean good painting, outside our country (France), and all too often, alas, exhibitions of foreigners confirm this belief. A brilliant exception comes this week to prove us the contrary. It comes from Jefferson Tester...."²

The boy from Roseburg had fulfilled his promise. He had worked hard, studied well, and was now a rising star in the international art world. His style reflected an unusual approach to painting — an aggressive but somehow sublime and expressive brushstroke. This, combined with a moody and rich color pallet, led Tester to a fresh modern style of painting, all the time staying within a relatively realistic, expressionistic, and sometimes cubist framework.

Tester's work showed an acute awareness of European trends, but he produced a decidedly "American" style of painting. The figures in Tester's paintings are filled with emotion. They work, they sweat, they pass in the rain. All the time we, as the silent viewers, engage the passing moment in a sympathetic, sometimes slightly voyeuristic way. His figures seem somehow unaware of our presence, and even the landscape seems to pass without regard or acknowledgement.

AMANDA SNYDER QUIETLY worked in Portland. She preferred the solitude of her backyard to the fast pace of the city. She was a private person, but her world of solitude was filled with fantasy. Handmade dolls and backyard birds became more and more animate, yearning for a human persona — pleading with the viewer for interaction. Snyder's world may have been private, but the subjects in her paintings invite viewers into an intercourse of involvement and discussion.

By 1930, Snyder was already producing richly painted images in unique and experimental styles. Her world may have been small compared to Tester's, but her circle of influences was large and included most of the significant Portland artists of the twentieth century. She chose not to pursue academic study, instead relying on her own interaction with fellow artists for inspiration and direction.

Unlike her brother — who, aside from his commercial career, rarely worked outside of his preferred medium of oil paint — Snyder worked in many mediums, including oil, collage, sculpture, and prolific printmaking in woodcut, linocut, and experimental monotypes. Like her brother, she surrounded her artwork with subtle and well-designed frames that were hand colored and intended to put each painting in its best light. Much work went into these simple but beautiful frames, which in many cases might be considered works of art in themselves. Her goal was to merge the frame with the image rather than create any issues by its presence.

In 1929, Amanda met probably the single most significant artistic influence in her career — the painter C.S. Price (1874–1950), also a highly private and somewhat reclusive personality. Price, one of the pioneers of the new American painting, was an expressionist whose work became ever more modern and abstract as time went on. Snyder met him at his first exhibition at Meier and Frank Gallery in 1929. He was very impressed with her work and felt a kinship. He sensed that she understood what he was trying to do in his own experimental approach to art. The rich and heavily mottled application of paint and deep painterly qualities in Price's work began to invade Snyder's work as well.

Amanda Snyder, ca. 1975, linoleum block, 31/2" × 21/4" × 7/8"

Collection of the Oregon Historical Society

Price took note that Snyder's experimentation in design and her propensity to dark outlines was at times similar to the French painter Georges Rouault's work and suggested that she study his work. Not only did she study Rouault's paintings, she also began a correspondence with the artist that lasted until his death in 1958. Many of her paintings and collages show his influence.

Amanda Snyder, ca. 1975, linoleum block, 31/2" × 21/4" × 7/8"

Collection of the Oregon Historical Society

Snyder incorporated many important themes of twentieth-century modern art into her painting — from the nonobjective paintings of Vasily Kandinsky to the abstractions of Jackson Pollack. Because she rarely attended art exhibits, more likely she found these influences through books and magazines and even from the television. She was well aware of what was happening outside her small private world.

Snyder had made a fine reputation for herself, and for nearly five decades her work was included in almost every regional exhibit from Portland to Seattle, as well as an impressive list of one-person shows. The quality of her experimental and modern approach to painting opened the door for her into the male-dominated world of Portland mid-century art.

JEFFERSON TESTER'S UNIQUE style of modern painting had brought him international fame, but the Roseburg boy longed for the simplicity of life in his home state. His frequent visits to Portland over the years had brought him in touch with many of Portland's modern art pioneers, including C.S. Price. The call of Oregon was loud, and it would provide his final artistic destination.

Tester's years of travel came to an end in 1963 when he moved to Portland, married his childhood friend Stella, and opened a studio in his Lake Oswego home. He found a ready market for his "society" portrait business, but the Oregon of his youth was his real interest. He set out to recapture his childhood memories of sawmills and ghost towns, log trucks and churches, clam diggers and covered bridges.

In contrast to Snyder, whose paintings were included in numerous public exhibitions each year, Tester was content simply to paint. He rarely exhibited his work outside his own studio.

The world of brother and sister had gone full circle and reconvened in Portland for the final periods of their lives. This time, Tester pursued the privateness and anonymity that would allow him quietly to create a significant body of Oregon work in the last decade of his life. All the while, Snyder's art would receive wide recognition for her contributions to Northwest modernism and allow her to secure a significant place in the region's history.

When one looks today at the paintings of Jefferson Tester and Amanda Snyder, together in one room, with the advantage of time, they look surprisingly similar. The richly painted, heavily mottled, mostly figurative, always expressive paintings are often housed in handmade frames — each a wonderful example of American twentieth-century modernism. One might assume that brother and sister had the same artistic background or had exerted a great influence on each other's development. Instead, the true significance of these artistic lives is found in the way their individual paths and pursuits brought them to such similar artistic solutions.

Each of them — Snyder, the private sister who explored the world through her fantasies, and her worldly brother Jefferson Tester, who explored the world firsthand — found individual recognition and success as well as a similar destination in their pursuits of modern twentieth-century art. One went north, the other south — reunited and celebrated as Oregon originals.

Amanda Snyder, ca. 1960, linoleum block, 5" × 4" × 7/8"

Collection of the Oregon Historical Society

Notes

This essay was originally published in Robert L. Joki and Marsha T. Matthews, ed., Oregon Originals: The Art of Amanda Snyder and Jefferson Tester (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 2006). The exhibit Oregon Originals: The Art of Amanda Snyder and Jefferson Tester will be at the Oregon Historical Society through November 27, 2006.

^1.�Oregonian, Obituary, January 19, 1972.

^2.�Les Arts, January 18, 1952, from Jefferson Tester's notes, in author's possession.

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