Grace French:
Pioneer Teacher and Artist
Artist Biography
DVD and booklet available in The Journey Museum Store
Born in 1858, Grace Anna French grew up in New Hampshire and studied in the School of Drawing and Painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She came to Dakota Territory in 1885. Researchers can only surmise her beliefs from her involvement in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Christian Science community. She taught briefly at Black Hills College in Hot Springs, wrote standards for normal school art training, and, with her sister Abbie, instructed amateurs and serious students in painting, technical drawing and china painting for more than 50 years. At her death in 1942, she left a small legacy of paintings to the city; they were not displayed until The Dahl Fine Arts Center was built in 1975. The Minnilusa Pioneer Museum featured Miss French in a story wall when The Journey Museum opened in 1997.
“The Grace French legacy of Rapid City and Hills scenery remains, today, as the first and best historical art work of the past century in the Black Hills,” wrote historian and collector David Strain in 1989.
Click on breaking-new-ground.pdf and pursuit-of-art.pdf to learn more detail.
