User:AnnieZhou11/Angel De Cora

Education, Mentors, and Early Work
Angel De Cora was one of the very few students who were accepted into Howard Pyle’s competitive summer art program, where Pyle lauded De Cora as “not only talent but genius.” Despite knowing that as a woman and as a Native American, De Cora faced more challenges in enjoying success than her peers, Pyle's belief in her was so strong that he still provided her with contacts at magazines and encouraged her to illustrate and compose her own semi-autobiographical stories, “The Sick Child” and “Gray Wolf’s Daughter,” which were later published in the February and November 1899 issues of Harper’s Monthly.

During the summer of 1898, under Pyle’s guidance, De Cora painted the oil painting Lafayette’s Headquarters, which was one of her only works featuring non-Indigenous subjects. She employed semi-Impressionistic brushwork, which demonstrated Pyle’s influence. While Pyle and De Cora got along well as student and mentor for the most part, Pyle’s disregard for authenticity in traditional Indigenous attire, despite paying careful attention to historical accuracy when depicting the attire of white people, was often a source of contention. Another source of contention between the student and mentor was that De Cora did not wish to emulate her teacher like her peers strived to; De Cora once informed Pyle that she was an American Indian and did not wish to paint exactly like a white man.

When De Cora left Philadelphia, she went to Boston, and enrolled at the Cowles Art School to study life drawing under the tutelage of Joseph DeCamp. Decamp left after a year, but recommended her to The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, also in Boston, where she remained for the next two years, studying under Frank Benson and Edmund C. Tarbell, both of whom were known for their outdoor figure paintings and unique usage of light in their works. These mentors had a huge influence on De Cora’s future works.

Art Style
De Cora's art style blended Western techniques with traditional Native American styles. Her figures focused heavily on gesture, which is something that is heavily focused on in Native American pictographs. Because these illustrations were often accompanied with text, De Cora was able to make a traditionally Native American art form into something understandable to white Americans, without bastardizing the original work. Most of her work would portray the Native American lifestyle through a feminized lens, which was something that was altogether unfamiliar to white Americans of the time. However, her portrayal of Native Americans was not static; she portrayed them as a changing people, and would blend Native American and EuroAmerican elements to demonstrate this change.

Death
At the age of 47, De Cora developed influenza and pneumonia while staying at a friend’s home in Northampton, and ultimately died. She was buried in their family plot without a marker, as at the time, only blood relatives could have a headstone.