page_title: Dewing Woodward
section_title: Blue Dome Fellowship years
hierarchical_section_title: Dewing Woodward / Blue Dome Fellowship years
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Poultney Bigelow
context_page_description: Martha Dewing Woodward was an American artist and art teacher. According to her obituary in the New York Times, she was "one of the nation's leading painters." Among her accomplishments, she founded the first art school in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1896. In 1907, Woodward and her partner, Louise Johnson, founded the Blue Dome Fellowship in Woodstock, New York, which Woodward continued in Florida after her move there. Woodward's art and teachings thrived in Florida, where her work had a lasting impact.
  Woodward studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia and the Academie Julian in Paris. In addition to teaching at her summer art schools, Woodward taught art at the Female Institute in Lewisburg, the Women’s College of Baltimore, the Ethical Culture School in New York City, and the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. Woodward was active in the art world through painting and volunteering until her death in 1950.
context_section_description: Returning permanently to America in 1907, Woodward and Johnson established the artist colony, the Blue Dome Fellowship, in Shady-in-the-Catskills where they taught for ten years. Likely branching from Woodward’s strong religious faith, the colony’s name comes from Woodward’s favorite slogan: Worship God under the blue dome of heaven. The colony was located near the Brydcliffe Art Colony in Woodstock, New York. The Blue Dome Fellowship followed the popular French style of painting where artists posed living nude models in the open air. The Fellowship members consisted mainly of women and included many famous people in the arts, including Woodward’s good friend, Poultney Bigelow. The James Cox Gallery in Willow, New York, held a festival in 2006, recreating the painting technique that produced ninety paintings.
  In 1908, Woodward wrote and published Some Adventures of Two Vagabonds: By One of ‘Em, a series of short stories about her and Johnson, under the pseudonym Wealthy Ann York, her mother’s maiden name. She also wrote The Mass of the Shepherds of Provence, a short story published in 1911 by Hervey White's Maverick Press.
  The Blue Dome Fraternity studio, appropriately called “Red Roof” for its red tiled roof, burned down in 1912, pushing Woodward into financial troubles. Throughout the rest of her life, Woodward struggled financially.
caption: Woodward's portrait drawings of her friend, the writer Poultney Bigelow
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