Oil on canvas
35 x 66 cm
Signed bottom right
Natalie Curtis Burlin lived a fascinating and impressive life. On top of being a highly accomplished painter, she was also a renowned ethnomusicologist. She transcribed and published the traditional music of both Native Americans and African-Americans, preserving culture that would otherwise have been lost. Curtis championed marginalised societies and had a profound effect on racial integration inAmerica at the turn of the 19th century.
Born in New York City, 1875, to a wealthy family, she showed an early talent for music and went on to study at the National Conservatory of Music of America in her hometown. At this point she seemed set for a career as a concert pianist. But following a trip to Arizona in 1900, she was fascinated by the study of Native American music and became determined to record and share it.
By appealing directly to President Theodore Roosevelt, a family friend, she won the removal of a ban on its performance in the United States. Through this relationship, she fought for the preservation of Native American cultures. Atone point, Curtis even brought a Mojave-Apache chief to Roosevelt's house to ask for his tribal land rights. The President went on to describe her as one‘who has done so very much to give Indian culture its proper position’.
Throughout these years, she tirelessly campaigned to promote marginalised music: in 1911,she co-founded the Music School Settlement for Colored People, and in 1912 helped sponsor the first concert featuring black musicians at Carnegie Hall.
In 1917 she married the artist Paul Burlin, who would later become an Abstract Expressionist. Four years into their happy marriage, they moved to Paris. But only months later, Natalie was tragically struck down by a taxi in the street and died aged just 46, bringing to a close her short but eventful life.
Throughout all this Curtis Burlin managed to find the time to develop into a skilled painter.She predominantly focused on seascapes, often in Europe, but also painted landscapes of her native America. The present work has a beguiling mystery toit as the moonlight shines over the still Port of Le Havre.
