Wachtel, Marion Kavanagh (1876-1954). 

Landscape painter. 

Born in Milwaukee, WI on June 10, 1876 into an artistic family. 

Marion's mother was an artist and her great-grandfather a Royal Academician in London.  She studied at the AIC under Vanderpoel and in NYC with William M. Chase. 

For several years she taught at the AIC and established a reputation in Milwaukee as a competent portrait painter. 

A commission from the Santa Fe Railway Company to paint scenes in their ticket offices brought her to California.  Arriving in San Francisco in 1903, she became a pupil of William Keith. 

Learning of her proposed move to Southern California, Keith suggested that she contact Elmer Wachtel.  A romance blossomed and they married in 1904.  After Elmer's death in 1929, she was inactive for a few years but continued to live in their Arroyo Seco home; by the early 1930s she was painting and exhibiting again. 

Mrs. Wachtel worked exclusively and watercolor until after her husband's death and then used both watercolor and oil. 

Regular exhibitions with both the California and New York Watercolor Societies made her paintings popular on both coasts. 

Her early works are tighter and more meticulously detailed than those produced after 1920. 

After her marriage, the artist dropped the "u" in her surname and then spelled it "Kavanagh." 

She died at her home in Pasadena on May 22, 1954. 

Member:  Calif. WC Society; Academy of Western Painters, LA; Pasadena Society of Painters; Friday Morning Club, LA; NY WC Club; Ten Painters of LA. 

Exhibited:  LACMA, 1915, 1917; Stanford Univ., 1936. 

Works held:  Laguna Museum; Calif. State Bldg., LA; Woman's Club, Hollywood; Cedar Rapids Museum; Fremont High School, LA; Gardena (CA) High School; Friday Morning Club, LA.  AAA 1909-29; WWWA 1936-53; fld; The Woman Artist in the American West; WAA; Sam; Ber; Laguna Beach Museum of Art, 1918-78 cat.; Calif. Design 1910; AAW; SCA; Los Angeles Painters of the 1920s; PAP; Women of the West, 1928.