Margaret Casey Gates, Washington, DC Artist (1903-1989)

Margaret Casey Gates, Washington, DC Artist (1903-1989)

Normally, I accomplish extensive research before I sit down to write my artist blog.  Today is different, the information on Margaret Gates from the Archives from American Art website is so good and complete.  I am going to share it with you:  

Margaret Casey Gates was born in 1903 in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. She studied art in the studio of Bertha Perry, and from 1924 to 1926 at the Corcoran Art School. She later studied under Henry Varnum Poor at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

After working as a commercial artist from 1928-1929, Casey began studying at the Phillips Memorial Gallery in 1931 under C. Law Watkins. There, she met her husband, painter Robert Franklin Gates, and married on January 7, 1933. Robert Franklin Gates (1906-1982), who came to Washington, D.C. in 1930, also studied at the Phillips Gallery Art School and worked with Karl Knaths between 1934 and 1947.

Between 1934 and 1941, Robert Gates, with other artists including Mitchell Jamieson and Prentiss Taylor, made several painting trips to the Virgin Islands on a fine arts commission from the U. S. Treasury Department. Margaret Gates accompanied her husband and produced artwork of her own. She also documented their travels. During this same time, Robert taught at the Phillips Gallery Art School and Margaret was employed as the Art School's secretary. In 1937, they purchased a house in McLean, Virginia where Margaret lived until 1980.

In 1939, Margaret Gates won honorable mention in a national mural competition held by the Section of Fine Arts of the U. S. Public Buildings Administration and was subsequently commissioned by the Federal Works Agency to execute a mural for the Post office at Mebane, North Carolina. The mural was completed and installed in 1941.

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Margaret Gates wrote articles on art for Washington, D. C. publications including the column "The People vs. Art" for American University's Right Angle, and for the magazine The Washington Spectator.

Margaret and Robert Gates were divorced circa 1955. They had no children.

Margaret Gates exhibited her work in the first exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in 1941, as one of many winners of a national competition sponsored by the Federal Works Agency for artwork to decorate a Marine hospital for lepers in Louisiana. She also exhibited in the "Group Show of Washington Painters" at the Bignou Gallery in New York City, as well as at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Phillips Collection, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. A retrospective of her work was exhibited at the Watkins Gallery of American University in 1981. Several of her paintings are in the collection of the Phillips Gallery.

Margaret Casey Gates died on November 4, 1989, in Mitchellville, Maryland.  Details of Gates’ life is included in two major books:  The Eye of Duncan Phillips and the North American Women Artist of the Twentieth Century, A Biographical Dictionary.   

Again, a special thanks goes out to Archives of American Art for their essay on Ms. Gates.  

An Observer is lead into the paintings of Margaret Gates by their charming simplicity, and then is fascinated by the wealth of beauty they contain.   Throughout her work there is a delicacy of touch and a consistent rightness of taste and feeling that has caused her paintings to be exhibited at museums and acquired by numerous private collectors.  Below is “Nancy’s Goldfish” - Exhibited at the Phillips Memorial Gallery in 1948; Oil on Canvas Board (18 x 21 inches).   

“Nancy’s Goldfish” has a flat, cube, color plane quality.  The goldfish tank sits in the open window with a view out to the barnyard with pink petaled flowers and orange centers.  The barn is made up of a triangle, squares and rectangles of flat color and the day is almost done with evening setting in.  It is the fish tank that captures our attention, we see four goldfish swimming about in a green garden.     Example of her signature:

Obituary from the Washington Post:

MARGARET C. GATES Painter & School Employee Margaret Casey Gates, 86, a painter who was a retired administrative assistant with the Madeira School, died of a heart attack Nov. 4, 1989, at a retirement home in Mitchellville where she had lived for the past year. Mrs. Gates, who was a native of Washington, studied at the Corcoran School of Art, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and the Phillips Gallery Art School. She was executive secretary of the Phillips Memorial Gallery from 1933 to 1945 and was affiliated with American University's Watkins Art Gallery from 1948 to 1953. She worked for the Madeira School for 19 years before retiring in 1969. Mrs. Gates had painted landscapes in oil and watercolors. Her work had been exhibited at the National Gallery of Art, the Phillips and American University. She was a former resident of Great Falls, Va., where she was a member of the Great Falls Historical Society and the Great Falls Garden Club. She also had been a member of the Fairfax Hospital Auxiliary. Her marriage to Robert Franklin Gates ended in divorce. She leaves no immediate survivors.