The Animal Artists of Woodstock

The Historical Society of Woodstock’s new exhibition, “Rosella Hartman and the Animal Sculptors of Woodstock,” celebrates the life and career of Rosella Hartman (1894-1993), who for almost seventy years made her home in Woodstock, New York.

The exhibition also touches on the work of the Woodstock sculptors Grace Mott Johnson (1882-1967), Hunt Diederich (1884-1953), Carl Walters (1881-1955), John B. Flannagan (1895-1942), and Hartman’s husband Paul Fiene (1899-1949), who joined her as part of a group of twentieth century American artists who were devoted to depicting animal subjects.

“Rosella Hartman and the Animal Sculptors of Woodstock” features approximately forty paintings, drawings, watercolors, lithographs, drypoints and etchings from the course of Hartman’s successful career, and a small group of sculpture.

The exhibition is curated by the art historian and board member Bruce Weber and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog with an essay by Dr. Weber, who during the course of organizing the exhibition associated with the artist’s great niece Suzi Van Ness, who donated a group of more than twenty stellar works by Hartman to the collection of the Historical Society of Woodstock.

The exhibition has been sponsored by Sharon Fletcher, whose former husband Tom Fletcher was a close friend of Hartman, who played a role in inspiring him to open an art gallery in Woodstock that operated from 1992 to 2019 and specialized in the art of the colony.

Rosella Hartman

Rosella Hartman was born on May 23, 1894, in Junction City, Kansas, where the surrounding prairies and wildlife nurtured her lifelong appreciation for the world of nature. The Hartman family’s life revolved around art and music, and she and her seven siblings left the Midwest for other climes.

Her brother Bertram and sister Eda settled in New York. Bertram became a well-known artist, and her sister Eda was a successful dress and costume designer. In her early 20s, Hartman left Kansas to study art in Chicago and New York City.

In 1919 she traveled to Woodstock to study with Andrew Dasburg at the summer school of the Art Students League of New York, where she met and soon married Paul Fiene.

Journeying into town aboard the Longyear bus, Hartman looked up to see Overlook Mountain and the village of Woodstock nestled in its shadow and immediately knew that this was where she wanted to spend her life.

By 1925, Rosella Hartman resided full-time in Woodstock and began to make her long and successful path in the American art world. Hartman first achieved recognition around 1930 for her black-and-white drawings and prints. She paid greater attention to color during the 1930s, and to painting in oil beginning in the 1940s.

During her initial years in the Catskills, she became interested in the subject of animals. The scope of her interest expanded from sketches of cats in a domestic setting, to explorations of the animal life surrounding her lush mountainside property on Speare Road, to the lions, leopards, tigers, pumas, jaguars, and panthers under the command of trainer and ringmaster Damroo Dhotic at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Florida.

John B. Flannagan, Sculptor of the Maverick Horse

There will be an opening reception on Saturday, September 5 at 3 pm and gallery talks by curator Bruce Weber on Sunday September 20 at 1 pm and Sunday October 25 at 2:30 pm.

On Saturday, October 3rd at 2:30 pm Katherne Rangoon Doyle will be presenting the lecture “John B. Flannagan, Sculptor of the Maverick Horse,” and signing copies of John B. Flannagan: A Salvation in Stone, the first book to be published on this pioneering American sculptor, who was a regular visitor to Woodstock and created the wooden sculpture of the Maverick horse at the Maverick Concert Hall. Admission to all events and the exhibit is free.

The Historical Society of Woodstock was founded in 1929 by a group of artists, writers, academics, and local citizens. In addition to the exhibition space, which is located at the historic Eames House on Comeau Drive in the center of Woodstock, the Historical Society has an extensive archive consisting of paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture, textiles, photographs, books, manuscripts, correspondence, documents, film/sound recordings, and antique tools. The archive serves as a resource for a wide range of exhibitions, public programming, and research.

The exhibition runs on Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 5 pm, from September 5 through November 8, 2026, at the Historical Society of Woodstock, 20 Comeau Drive, Woodstock. For more information on the Historical Society of Woodstock and Woodstock history, visit www.historicalsocietyofwoodstock.org.

Read more about the Arts in New York State

Illustrations, from above: A work by Rosella Hartman; Paul Fiene’s sculpture “Rising Deer,” and John B. Flannagan’s “The Maverick Horse.”