ZELLA DICKINSON (1895-1982). California Artist, Rowboats in "Sunny Water", Circa 1967, 12" x 16" oil and/or acrylic on canvas (framed size: 19-1/2" x 23-1/2") signed lower left: Dickinson. Has a label on the back from Westside Jewish Community Center Art Sale, 1967. Price in 1967 was $45.00.
Dickinson, Zella Mae Wunderlich
1895, David City, Nebraska-1982, San Diego, California
Also known as Zella Mae Dickinson Wunderlich
With early roots in Nebraska, Zella Dickinson became an established and successful modernist artist in California, where she had studios in Hollywood and San Diego. Zella was raised in Bone Creek, Nebraska, which was near her birthplace of David City and which was named for the mastodon and other ancient creature fossils found along its banks. Her parents were George and Ida Crumbliss Wunderlich, and Zella had two brothers and one sister. When she was attending college in Lincoln, she lived part of the time with her parents, who had moved to Lincoln where her father’s real estate business was located.
Zella studied music at Wesleyan University and then art at the University of Nebraska School of Fine Arts. Her 1920 Lincoln City Directory listing as a “music teacher” at 41 N Street in proximity of the state University suggests she paid for her art study by giving music lessons.
Her art training continued in Chicago at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and in Los Angeles at the Otis Art Institute. In 1922 in Oakland, Nebraska, she married Charles Gilbert Dickinson, and the couple had two children. They settled in San Diego, where Zella set up a studio in Spanish Village, a tourist area that was part of Balboa Park. She did paintings, ink drawings, and woodblock prints. She also taught classes in acrylics and mixed media at nearby San Diego Art Institute.
Memberships included California Watercolor Society, Women Painters of the West, San Diego Artists Guild, San Diego Watercolor Society, San Diego Art Institute, and Laguna Beach Art Association. Her works were exhibited in both group and one-person shows including at the San Diego Library, 1971 (acrylics, woodcuts and ink drawing); and Scandia Interiors of San Diego in 1970 (oil and watercolors).
Museum exhibition venues were the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pasadena Art Museum, M.H DeYoung Memorial Museum, California Palace of Legion of Honor in San Francisco, San Diego Museum of Art, and San Diego Art Institute.
Zella Wunderlich Dickinson died at age 87 in San Diego on November 11, 1982.
Sources:
Ancestry 2014;
askART (Biography of ArtSanDiego Gallery-Artists Biographical Brochure), accessed 8/2015
“Bone Creek Township, Butler County, Nebraska,” Wikipedia, 2015
Ebay Auction record, Sold 7/8/2011; 7/11/1982
San Diego Union newspaper, 12/1/1968; 6/28/1970; 9/18.1971; 10/29/1971 2/27/1972; 11/17/1980
“Zella Dickinson Listed Artist Ink/BD ‘Shophar,’ ” Worthpoint, Web , 2015
Researched, written, and copyrighted by Lonnie Pierson Dunbier,
Museum of Nebraska Art Project:
Their Place, Their Time: Women Artists in Nebraska, 1825-1945