Pueblo by Sarah Wool Moore

(1846-1911). Oil on board; 10" x 14". Taos, New Mexico of Pueblo. Auction record; a little "gem". One of the earliest and most significant figures in the development of Nebraska's support of American and regional art, Sarah Moore came to Lincoln to the University of Nebraska in 1884. At that time, Lincoln had virtually no art culture, and she was determined to do something about that void. She was born in Plattsburgh, New York. Her parents were Amasa Moore and Charlotte Moore, and she had five siblings. She was a graduate of Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, and also studied with August Eisenmenger at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in Austria. At the University of Nebraska, she was an asset in that she brought culture from the 'outside', having spent eight years studying abroad. In Lincoln, she taught painting and drawing and later was an instructor of art history and head of the University Art Department. She was an active political proponent of strengthening the department and wrote numerous letters to the University regents pleading for respectable teachers' salaries so that she was armed to attract good people and keep the ones already there. Because of her, art class sizes increased greatly. In 1888, Moore led the organizing the Haydon Art Club, the predecessor of the Nebraska Art Association, which has been the support organization for Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery. She was the "Founder of Italian Society and Camp Schools at Pittsburg filtration plant, Ashokan Dam and Valhalla, and that she published an illustrated English-Italian Language Book in 1902, (republished in 1908) by D.C. Heath and Co., Boston. So it can be said that Sarah Wool Moore, who began the art department at the University of Nebraska continued her influence of bringing culture to Americans, but this time much farther to the east and in the area of verbal language rather than visual art. Portrait of a Girl by Moore is in that collection, and that painting as well as the Portrait of Charles Gere, founder of the Lincoln newspaper, are the only two paintings by Moore in Nebraska. The Gere portrait is at the state historical society. It is known that Sarah Wool Moore died on May 19, 1911 in Valhalla, Pennsylvania.