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At the turn of the
century, Jane Gallatin Powers was one woman
who had it all. Endowed with beauty, brains
and wealth, she was both a celebrated artist
and a beloved wife and mother.
 Working
side by side with her husband, San Francisco
attorney Frank Hubbard Powers, Jane's love
of the arts combined with Frank's
entrepreneurial spirit to forge an artist's
haven that became Carmel-by-the-Sea. Yet her
last days were spent alone, in a small
apartment in Nazi-occupied Rome. Cut off by
war from family and friends, her only means
of support were boxes of food sent by the
Swiss consulate. She died shortly after Rome
was liberated from the Nazis and almost four
decades would pass before her luminous oil
paintings were be seen again.
Hers is a story right
out of Grimm's fairy tales - with a tragic
ending. Yet the legacy of her art lives on,
both in the enduring spirit of her beloved
Carmel, and in the artistic vision of her
descendants.
In the Beginning (Sacramento, CA
1868-1900)
Jane Gallatin Powers
was born in Sacramento, March 24, 1868, to
Albert Gallatin of New York and Clemenza
“Nemie” Rhodes of Michigan. She had a
younger brother Albert “Bertie” and a
sister, Grace.
Jane was nine years old
when she moved into the house on H Street. A
pioneer developer of hydro-electric power in
California, Albert Gallatin’s successes
enabled him to put more than $75,000 into
furnishing his mansion at a time when homes
were selling for $700.
In 1881, Nemie divorced
Albert and moved East with Grace. A year
later, Albert remarried, a beautiful 20
year-old Sacramento girl named Malvena
Robbins. During her teens, Jane “crossed the
ocean” several times, traveling throughout
Europe, where she developed a passion for
art.
In 1891 Jane Gallatin
met and married Frank Powers, a successful
San Francisco attorney and avid outdoorsman.
Together, they set about looking for a place
to call home.
The Founding of Carmel (Carmel, CA
1900-1920)
In 1900, Frank and Jane
bought up most of what is now Carmel by the
Sea and founded the Carmel Development
Company, Instead of a fancy mansion, they
chose to live simply in a rustic log cabin
complete with a dirt floor, though it is
true that at one time Jane had the place
spruced up with over 20 chandeliers.
 By
1907, they had three daughters - Grace
Madeleine, Marian Hubbard or "Polly" as she
was known, and Dorcas Jane, and one son,
Gallatin. In 1906, the S.F. Call devoted a
full page to the "artists, poets and writers
of Carmel-by-the-Sea," noting that "Mrs.
Frank Powers the artist is revamping the old
log ranch on San Antonio into a livable
residence, and the log barn into a studio,"
Carmel's first artist studio.
By 1910 the S.F. Call
was reporting that "60 percent (of Carmel's
houses were) built by citizens who (were)
devoting their lives to work connected to
the aesthetic arts
Jane's advocacy for the
arts played no small role in the development
of the artistic character for which Carmel
is famous, for it was she along with her
husband who convinced many of their artist
friends, left homeless by San Francisco's
great fire of 1906, to give Carmel a try."
Among other artists and
bohemians of her day, Jane Powers' guest
list included William Chase, George
Sterling, a friend of Frank Powers from the
Bohemian Club, and writer Mary Austin.
San Francisco Sketch
Club
San Francisco Spinner’s
Club
Arts and Crafts Club of
Carmel
Bonfires and Voyages
(Europe 1920-1929)
In 1920, Frank Powers
died. Within months, Jane set sail for
France with Polly, Dorcas Jane, and
Gallatin. Madeleine, their eldest child, had
by this time married and set up housekeeping
in the Powers' San Francisco home.
According to her
grand-daughter Lolly Fassett, who was nine
years old the year Jane Powers set sail for
Europe, she burned them all in a bonfire on
the beach. Jane settled her children in
French schools and resumed painting, setting
up studios in Paris, Rome and Capri.
In 1925, Polly married
Marino Dusmet, the son of the duke of Naples
and himself the podesta (or "governor") of
Capri. And in 1927, after a three-week
courtship, Dorcas Jane married Count Roberto
Penazzi Ricci, who was, according to the
S.F. Call, "a dashing Italian aviator and
member of a prominent family." Tragically,
Dorcas Jane died of fever in 1929 only days
before her 29th birthday, leaving a young
daughter, Roberta.
During these years, she
studied with Andre L'hote, one of Cezanne's
pupils, and in 1929 her work was exhibited
at the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon des
Independants in Paris, the Galerie Guillot,
and the Galerie Zak, and in Rome and Capri
as well.
A Humble Settling (Rome 1929-1944)
Then came the Crash of
1929, and subsequent Depression. With her
children suffering from financial hardships,
she even attempted to sell off some of the
rugs of her San Francisco home, but to no
avail.
 And
then came World War II, and with it the Nazi
occupation of Rome, the city where she had
at last hung up her traveling shoes and
settled.
By 1942, her funds were
completely cut off, and with essentials
almost impossible to obtain, one needed
friends outside the city to bring in such
luxuries as mild, eggs and fruit. Jane was
desparate for a copy of her birth
certificate, without which she could not
obtain a food ration card or prove her Aryan
heritage to the Fascists. The necessary
documents never reached her.
Her grandson Seth Ulman,
then a 24-year-old medic with the U.S. Army,
spent four days with Jane shortly after the
liberation of Rome. Living in a tiny
apartment furnished with 14th-century
antiques, the walls hung with her oil
paintings, and with a servant to set the
table, she prepared a scant meal from the
remnants of food sent by the Swiss
consulate. "We ate dried plants, some
unnamed vegetable," Ulman remembers. "No
meat."
On Dec. 18, 1944,
shortly after her grandson's visit, Jane
Gallatin Powers died. The cause of death was
thought to be advanced arteriosclerosis.
And her paintings?
When her eldest
daughter, Madeleine Powers Ulman Leoni, died
in 1980, dozens of Jane Gallatin Powers'
Italian paintings were unearthed in the
basement of her Carmel home. They had been
stored, sight unseen, for more than three
decades. Incredibly, most of the paintings
survived unscathed, and many have been
restored. In 1983, San Francisco's
prestigious Maxwell Gallery mounted a
retrospective of California's early women
painters, and included three of those
pieces.
Her Carmel
contemporaries:
M. Charlton Fortune
M. DeNeale Morgan
Her European
contemporaries:
Andre Lhote |
