Caroline Mytinger (March 6, 1897 — November 3, 1980), was an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

portrait painter born in

Sacramento, California ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento C ...

, and raised in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

. She is best known for her paintings of indigenous people in the South Seas during the late 1920s. These paintings are in the custody of the

Phoebe Apperson Hearst Phoebe Elizabeth Apperson Hearst (December 3, 1842 – April 13, 1919) was an American philanthropist, feminist and suffragist. Hearst was the founder of the University of California Museum of Anthropology, now called the Phoebe A. Hearst Mus ...

Museum of Anthropology on

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

's campus in Berkeley, CA. Her work was featured in the museum's 2008 exhibition “Face to Face: Looking at Objects That Look at You.”

Biography

In March 1926 she traveled to the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capita ...

and Papua-New Guinea, with her childhood friend Margaret Warner. They only brought $400 between them, planning "to support themselves by painting portraits of white colonials encountered along the way." She produced paintings and two books about their experience. One notable painting was a portrait of a canoe builder named Iomai. Mytinger and Warner both returned to the United States in 1930. The two books were published in the 1940s. In 1943 Mytinger bought a one-bedroom studio and became a permanent resident of

Monterey, California Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under bo ...

art colony An art colony, also known as an artists' colony, can be defined two ways. Its most liberal description refers to the organic congregation of artists in towns, villages and rural areas, often drawn by areas of natural beauty, the prior existence o ...

on California's Pacific coastline. The 2017 documentary ''Headhunt Revisited: With Brush, Canvas, and Camera'' features Seattle photographer and filmmaker

Michele Westmorland Michele Westmorland is an American photographer who specializes in underwater photography. Westmorland is a fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers and The Explorers Club. She runs her own company, Westmorland LLC, in Redmo ...

traveling to the South Pacific to follow Mytinger's footsteps. The film premiered in

Port Moresby (; Tok Pisin: ''Pot Mosbi''), also referred to as Pom City or simply Moresby, is the capital and largest city of Papua New Guinea. It is one of the largest cities in the southwestern Pacific (along with Jayapura) outside of Australia and New Z ...

, Papua New Guinea.

Selected bibliography

*''Head-hunting in the Solomon Islands,'' Caroline Mytinger,

Macmillan Publishers Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the 'Big Five' English language publi ...

, 1942 *''New Guinea Headhunt,'' Caroline Mytinger,

, 1946

References

Sources

* Smithsonian, April 2006, p. 82–89.
A Gibson Girl in New Guinea
retrieved June 25, 2017 1897 births 1980 deaths American women painters Headhunting accounts and studies American portrait painters Painters from California 20th-century American painters 20th-century American women artists Artists from Sacramento, California Artists from Cleveland Painters from Ohio {{US-painter-1890s-stub