page_title: Mary Agnes Yerkes
section_title: Plein-air and the National Parks
hierarchical_section_title: Mary Agnes Yerkes / Plein-air and the National Parks
caption_attribution_description: English: Mary Agnes Yerkes painting en plein air at Carmel, CA.
context_page_description: Mary Agnes Yerkes, was an American Impressionist painter, photographer and artisan. She was skilled in the media of oil, pastel and watercolor. Her professional career was cut short by the Great Depression, but she still continued to paint well into her nineties with a passion for her craft and nature. She is noted for her plein-air painting while camping the American West and its National Parks.
context_section_description: "The two Yerkes oils in particular, [Crocker Art Museum], are wonderful examples of California Impressionism, and by a woman, which makes them even more rare."  - Scott A. Shields, Ph.D., Associate Director/ Chief Curator, Crocker Art Museum.
  With Northern California as a permanent base, Yerkes now painted for herself. She had ready access to some of the West's greatest natural wonders. She traveled, camped and painted from Yosemite Valley to Santa Fe and from Tucson to Alberta, Canada. Travelogues, kept by her husband, showed detailed records of these adventures all throughout the 1930s and 40s. They toured in their specially modified 1920s Buick which was equipped with extra storage pockets and a canvas sling for an interior bed. Yerkes, her husband, and their daughter Mary, (nicknamed Min), spent weekends and holidays traveling on dirt roads to explore the inner sanctums of the newly established National Parks. Extended expeditions took them several times throughout the West and they toured many National Parks including; Crater Lake, Mt Rainier, Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Rainbow Bridge and Arches, Mesa Verde, Joshua Tree, Death Valley, Grand Canyon, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and Yosemite, as well as the Oregon, Washington and California coasts. Yosemite Valley was a particular favorite subject matter and destination because of its beauty and proximity to San Mateo.
  Yerkes mostly painted en plein-air but she also worked at home in a studio. Numerous photographs were taken by her on each trip to be used as reference later. Archie died in 1945 and Yerkes' painting efforts took a pause. They resumed in the 1950s with encouragement from her second partner, Albert Cobb, although she did not remarry. Yerkes continued to camp and paint the American West well into the 1970s and into her nineties. She also hooked pictorial rugs, wove fabric for her own clothes and accessories, and carved furniture in the same Southwestern and natural motifs she loved to paint. She died in San Mateo on November 8, 1989, at the age of 103.  After decades of painting, over [150] of her paintings adorned her own walls at the time of her death. The art world knows her as "Mary Agnes" Yerkes but she, as well as her family members, used "Agnes".
caption: Mary Agnes plein-air painting at Carmel," Carmel Beach, California, circa 1920s.
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