y \
J f *\,
v$ ^ \
-afru/
University of California • Berkeley
•*>./ (
f\ \
Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
Helen Oldfield
(1902-1981)
OTIS OLDFIELD AND THE SAN FRANCISCO ART COMMUNITY,
1920S TO 1960S
An Interview Conducted by
Micaela DuCasse and Ruth Cravath
1981
Copy No. /
Copyright (c) 1982 by the Regents of the University of California
Otis Oldfield, 1913
Photo by Pierre Petit, Paris
Helen and Otis, ca. 1960
Helen and Otis with their daughters,
Rhoda and Jayne, San Francisco
The Oldfields with granddaughter
Rachel Haug, Alta Cabin, 1957
All uses of this manuscript are covered by a
legal agreement between the Regents of the University
of California and Helen Oldfield dated January 14, 1981.
The manuscript is thereby made available for research
purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript,
including the right to publish, are reserved to The
Bancroft Library of the University of California Berkeley.
No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication
without the written permission of the Director of The
Bancroft Library of the University of California at
Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for publication
should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office,
Room 486 Library, and should include identification of
the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of
the passages, and identification of the user.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited
as follows :
Helen Oldfield, "Otis Oldfield and the San Francisco
Art Community, 1920s to 1960s," an oral history
conducted 1981 by Micaela DuCasse and Ruth Cravath,
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley, 1982.
TABLE OF CONTENTS — Helen Oldfield
PREFACE, by Suzanne B. Riess i
INTERVIEW HISTORY, by Micaela Martinez DuCasse and Ruth Cravath ii
INTERVIEW ONE, JANUARY 14, 1981
Tape 1, Side A: Family, birth and early years; education
as a child in Santa Rosa; high school years, and study at
Arts & Crafts in Berkeley; first job as a commercial artist;
continuing art school studies part time; Arts & Crafts, the
Frederick Meyers . 1
Tape 1, Side B: Arts & Crafts, the Meyers; her own work;
Marty; Otis Oldfield, first meeting; Mark Hopkins Art In
stitute; Otis' s private class; night classes at Institute;
courtship and wedding . 16
Tape 2, Side A: Wedding description; friendship with Yun
Gee; early married life; two daughters. 30
INTERVIEW TWO, JANUARY 21, 1981
Tape 2, Side B: The wedding; attendant, Lucille Duff; Ralph
Stackpole stands up for Otis; Otis's parents and family
background and birth, etc.; Otis's childhood, family tra
vels, schooling, and eventual arrival in San Francisco and
return to Sacramento; Otis works at various jobs to raise
money to go to Paris ; trip to Paris ; commonlaw marriage to
Jeanne Roche, from 1909-1924, is period of his Paris stay;
his return to San Francisco. 45
Tape 3, Side A: First Parillia Ball at San Francisco Art
Institute; Otis returns to San Francisco particularly be
cause of his friendship with Ralph Stackpole; exhibitions
of Otis's work; his bookbinding — learning it in Paris;
binding erotic books for Hollywood people on special com
missions. 58
Tape 3, Side B: Otis's illustrations for McTeague, by Frank
Norris, published by Colt Press; drawings of Telegraph Hill
people in early 1940s; Otis's Alaskan trip — the book of his
journal of that trip commissioned by Grabhorn Hoyem Press,
and the illustrations he did for the book; Otis's death,
May 18, 1969. 72
INTERVIEW THREE, FEBRUARY 4, 1981
Tape 4, Side A: Helen's brother and sister; dates of teaching
at Hamlin School; birth date; how Otis worked, his schedule,
hobbies, views from his studio; World War II: Moore Shipyards,
Army Transport Service, Fort Mason; Helen's volunteer war work
with Red Cross Bureau of Inquiry; Helen and Otis work rehabili
tating wounded veterans; Helen and other artists review and jury
artists for work with hospitalized veterans; Otis hired, Arts
& Crafts, fall 1945; Otis fired by Spencer Macky, director of
California College of Arts & Crafts; move to Telegraph Hill,
October 1937; the Oldf ield-Wakef ield nursery. 86
Tape 4, Side B: Nursery story and reminiscences of Telegraph
Hill — Cravath and Helen; move to Russian Hill home; Otis takes
over dining room as his studio space; move to Joost Street
home, bought in 1960; Helen's experiences teaching at St. Rose
Academy; burst appendix, recovery, and finding the home on
Joost Street; artists they had close friendships with: Piazzoni,
Rinaldo Cuneo, Stackpole, Maynard Dixon. 100
Tape 5, Side A: Maynard Dixon; mural work, and restaurants,
such as Elgin's and Coppa's; Helen's meeting Archipenko's wife
at Coppa's; Otis's impression of children in general — Maynard
and his children; difference between painters and musicians;
Henry Cowell; Nelson Poole and wife; Poulanc; Lucien Labaudt,
his fashions, painting, attitude to women, in Burma WWII; how
Poulanc and Otis spoke in French; Cuneo; Moya DelPino, and
marriage to Helen Horst (took bookbinding from Otis); anecdote
about DelPino and the "fake" Goya; Horst girls' father and
Helen's father business associates. 115
INTERVIEW FOUR, FEBRUARY 18, 1981
Tape 5, Side B: Nathan Oliviera, student of Otis's, 1940-50;
Otis's retrospective shows, in 1976 and in 1972; trying to or
ganize a show of Otis's work in Sacramento; Otis's students —
Oliviera, Diebenkown, Hassel Smith; Otis's work, considered
avant garde when he returned to San Francisco from Paris , yet
later on considered not; Sam Francis, appearance on the art
scene; Otis's ideas on 20th century art; Helen's ideas on ab
stract art and Marty's saying about "insignificant planes";
Otis's feeling about Nature, and "decorative art," including
Arthur Matthews; Helen's reminiscences of Isabel Percy West,
as person and as teacher; Otis's teacher-student relationships
— Steve Perun; Otis's preference for Renoir, Matisse, etc. 128
Tape 6, Side A: Diego Rivera visits, 1930s — Stock Exchange
and Art School murals; Oldf ields ' impressions of him and his
"sweet, kind" nature; Diego's San Francisco social life and
associations — living in Stackpole's studio at 728 Montgomery
Street; Gee and the Chinese cultural group he founded in the
1930s, who entertained Rivera; Gee's exhibition at the Oakland
Museum in 1980; Billy Justema and the Synconatists; Helen's
memories of Frida Rivera in the 1930s; 1939-40 Fair and
Rivera's mural work there; the Riveras' remarriage in San
Francisco, and associations to that; Jose Clemente Orozco,
Covarrubias; Rivera's influence on art and artists in San
Francisco, and on the Coit Tower mural artists Ray Boynton,
Ralph Stackpole, and Victor Arnautoff; Otis's, Cuneo's and
DelPino's murals for Coit Tower; watching the artists at
work on the murals; Kenneth Rexroth and the artists group he
tried to organize during the mural activity; Otis's love of
teaching; Otis's only commercial art is for the San Francisco
Call; Otis's ability in pencil sketching and drawing, devel
oped in Paris. 142
INTERVIEW FIVE, FEBRUARY 25, 1981
Tape 6, Side B: [details of information that is found to
have been left out of some of the preceding tapes are added
here]: Helen's life — father's objections to her studying
art, and Jimmy Swinerton's part in this; story about what
Kenneth Rexroth said when Otis refused to join Rexroth's
artists group — "you are an anarchist" — to which Otis
agrees, but relents and joins for a short time; Otis's
unsuccessful venture with Ray Bertrand in a lithograph
series. 157
CONCLUSION, by Micaela Martinez DuCasse and Ruth Cravath Wakefield 162
EPILOGUE, by Jayne Oldfield Blatchly 163
INDEX 164
PREFACE
The Introduction which follows will explain to the reader the origins
and circumstances of this oral history with Helen Oldfield. Micaela DuCasse
and Ruth Cravath have really performed an important labor of historical
love here. The history, by Helen Oldfield, of the Oldfields and of the
San Francisco art community, complements the Regional Oral History Office's
interview with Ruth Cravath, and the interview with Elsie Whitaker Martinez,
Micaela' s mother. Taken all together they constitute a solid body of
knowledge about the people and the good life of the art world in the period
from the twenties to the sixties.
The interviewers took this project on as volunteers. That what would
exist only as donated tapes for listening to in The Bancroft Library now has
been turned into a usable memoir has come about because of the generosity
of Walter Nelson-Rees, James Goran, and Catherine Harroun.
With the sum of money these friends made available, the Regional Oral
History Office chose to transcribe the tapes, yet leave them in original
form, with what corrections and additions could be inserted by the inter
viewers and interviewee in reviewing the transcript. Occasional misspellings,
blank spots, or incomplete sentences should not seriously disrupt the reader's
use of this volume, which has been indexed and chaptered by the interviewers.
We join Micaela DuCasse and Ruth Cravath in thanking the underwriters of
this project, and we join them all in thinking highly of this memoir and
considering it a very fine addition to the Regional Oral History Office's
interviews in the arts.
Suzanne B. Riess
Senior Editor
January 1982
Regional Oral History Office
University of California
Berkeley, California
ii
INTRODUCTION
Upon his return from Paris in 1924, Otis Oldfield rejoined the San
Francisco art scene and he became renowned as an artist as well as a
teacher. He remained consistently an individual in his style and approach
to art, never going along with the style changes and trends of that time
onwards into the Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s. Nevertheless, he
was a colorful member of the Bay Area artists group, numbering many of them
as close friends until his death in 1969.
His widow, Helen Clark Oldfield, is an artist in her own right. She
shared the greater part of Otis's life from soon after his return to San
Francisco in the mid-twenties, until his death. Fortunately, she is able
to give us a spirited account in colorful terms of their family backgrounds,
their lives as individual artist before their marriage, as well as their
life together in the art milieu of the Bay Area in the thirties through the
sixties .
This important subject for an oral history under the auspices of The
Bancroft Library was decided upon late in 1980. It came about in the fall
of 1980 when Ruth Cravath Wakefield, longtime friend of Helen Oldfield1 s,
had been visiting Helen for several days after Helen had returned from a
time in the hospital. They reminisced about their earlier association and
Ruth was struck by the remarkably articulate and accurate information Helen
gave of Otis's and her life in the art world of San Francisco. Ruth knew
this would be important to record and spoke about it to Catherine Harroun
and Ruth Teiser.*
Knowing of Ruth's longtime friendship with Helen Oldfield, Catherine
Harroun and Ruth Teiser thought Ruth Cravath would be an ideal choice as
interviewer for Helen Oldfield. Ruth Cravath felt that she did not have the
experience to do it alone and she thought of another longtime friend of hers
who had had experience with tape recording procedures while working on a
course in the history of California art, Micaela Martinez DuCasse. Micaela
was only too pleased to be asked to team up with Ruth Cravath. After a
session with Catherine Harroun, Ruth Teiser, and the Regional Oral History
Office, and armed with clipboard, tape recorder, and a suggested beginning
outline, Ruth and Micaela spent the afternoon of January 14, 1981 with Helen
Oldfield in her home on Joost Street, San Francisco, on the first interview.
*Ruth Teiser and Catherine Harroun interviewed Ruth Cravath for: Ruth Cravath,
"Two San Francisco Artists and Their Contemporaries, 1920-1975," an oral
history conducted 1974-1975, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley, 1977, 365 pages.
iii
Interviewing Helen was a wonderful, heartwarming and joyful experience.
She proved to be a remarkably articulate and orderly-minded subject. Her
almost total recall was such that the information flowed with ease and clarity.
She was forthright in recounting family origins, characteristics, and her
own and Otis's activities with a gentle humor that suffused it all with a
light touch.
This quality of Helen's reminiscences was especially true of her account
of Otis Oldfield, his family background, and life in Paris and return to
San Francisco, leading up to their life together. It is a valuable document
of one of San Francisco's most distinguished and accomplished artists. It
could not have been recorded with more truth and completeness by Otis himself.
Helen was totally aware of his nature, capabilities and significance in the
period of the art of San Francisco and California of the time-span of his
life and work. Perhaps as sympathetic observer and full sharer in the greater
part of his artistic and creative life, she could give a more candid and
well-rounded picture of it than could Otis himself. It is a great tribute
to Otis, and to Helen as an individual artist in her own right while being
so much a part of him and his life, that she could give an objective as well
as a subjective account of their lives and times.
The interviews were spread over a period of three months, with six
sessions, from which five one-hour tapes were made. The final session, held
March 18, 1981, was to review recordings and add anything that Helen deemed
important that had been left out.
Personally, I was enthralled with the interviews, as I had heard so much
about Helen Oldfield through the many years of my friendship with Ruth Cravath,
and admired her from a distance. I had not had the opportunity of meeting
her, as an adult, until the first interview took place. All that I had heard
and built up about her in my own mind, was confirmed, and I came away from
the final interview feeling that I had gained a friend of great worth.
Very shortly after the final interview was taped, we were saddened to
learn that Helen Oldfield had suffered a severe stroke. She is recovering
slowly, but we cannot escape feeling that it was providential that we did the
oral history while she was well enough to have entered into it with such
enthusiasm and interest. For her it was a pleasure to relive her life and
that of Otis's, and to know that it was to be documented in a permanent form,
as it deserved to be for the enrichment of the total history of California
art in the twentieth century.
For Ruth and me, it was not only a labor of love, but a most enlightening
addition to our knowledge of California art history. We are grateful for the
opportunity of serving the cause of oral history documentation under the
auspices of The Bancroft Library's Regional Oral History Program.
Micaela Martinez DuCasse
Ruth Cravath Wake field
July 1981
Piedmont, California
iv
INTERVIEWS ON ARCHITECTURE, ART, DANCE, LITERATURE, MUSIC, AND
PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
Bound, indexed copies of the transcripts of the following interviews are
available at cost to libraries for deposit in noncirculating collections for
scholarly research.
Adams, Ansel (b. 1902), Conversations with Ansel Adams. In process.
Brother Antoninus (b. 1912), Brother Antoninus: Poet, Printer, and Religious. 1966, 97 p.
Asawa, Ruth (b. 1926), Art, Competence, and Citywide Cooperation for San Francisco.
1975, 191 p.
Bagley, Julian (b.1892), Welcome to the San Francisco Opera House. 1973, 111 p.
Boone, Philip S. (b. 1918), The San Francisco Symphony, 1940-1972: An Oral History.
1978, 188 p.
»
Church, Thomas D. (1902-1977), Thomas D. Church, Landscape Architect. A two-volume
study: Vol.1: Interviews with Theodore Bernardi, Lucy Butler, June Campbell,
Louis DeMonte, Walter Doty, Donn Emmons, Floyd Gerow, Harriet Henderson, Joseph
Rowland, Ruth Jaffe, Burton Litton, Germane Milono, Miriam Pierce, George Rockrise,
Robert Royston, Geraldine Knight Scott, Roger Sturtevant, Francis Violich,
Harold Watkin. Vol. II: Interviews with Maggie Baylis, Elizabeth Roberts Church,
Robert Glasner, Grace Hall, Lawrence Halprin, Proctor Mellquist, Everitt Miller,
Harry Sanders, Lou Schenone, Jack Stafford, Goodwin Steinberg, Jack Wagstaff .
1978, 803 p.
*Coggins, Herbert L. (1884-1974), Herbert Coggins: From Horatio Alger to Eugene Debs.
1956, 172 p.
Cravath, Ruth (b. 1902), and Dorothy Puccinelli Cravath (1901-1974), Two San Francisco
Artists and their Contemporaries, 1920-1975. 1977, 365 p.
Cunningham, Imogen (1883-1976), Portraits, Ideas, and Design. 1961, 215 p.
Dean, Mallette (1907-1975), Artist and Printer. 1970, 112 p.
*Graves, Roy D. (b.1906), Photograph Collection. 1964, 79 p.
*Gregg, John William (1880-1969), Landscape Architect. 1965, 182 p.
Hagemeyer, Johan (1884-1962), Photographer. 1956, 107 p.
*Hays, William Charles (1873-1963), Order, Taste, and Grace in Architecture. 1968, 245 p.
Howell, Warren R. (b.1912), Two San Francisco Boohnen. 1967, 73 p.
Lange, Dorothea (1895-1965), The Making of a Documentary Photographer. 1968, 257 p.
Lehman, Benjamin H. (b.1889), Recollections and Reminiscences of Life in the Bay Area
from 1920 Onward. 1969, 367 p.
Lewis, Oscar (b.1893), Literary San Francisco. 1965, 151 p.
Macky, E. Spencer (1880-1958) and Constance (1883-1961), Reminiscences. 1954, 121 p.
Magee, David (b.1905), Bookselling and Creating Books. 1969, 92 p.
Martinez, Elsie W. (b.1890), San Francisco Bay Area Writers and Artists. 1968, 268 p.
Miles, Josephine (b.1911), Josephine Miles: Poetry, Teaching, and Scholarship.. 1981.
Morgan, Julia, Project, 2 volumes: Volume I - The Work of Walter Steilberg and Julia
Morgan, interviews with Walter Steilberg, Robert Ratcliff, Evelyn Paine Ratcliff,
Norma Jensen, Jack Wagstaff, Edward Hussey, George Hodges; Reminiscences of the
Department of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley, 1904-1954, an
interview with Warren C. Perry; Walter Steilberg, Architect: The Man, His Times,
His Work, by Helena Steilberg Lawton. 1976, 374 p. Volume II - Julia Morgan,
Her Office, and a House, interviews with Mary Grace Barren, Dorothy Wormser Coblentz,
Bjarne Dahl, Bjarne Dahl, Jr., Edward Hussey, Hettie Belle Marcus, Polly Lawrence
McNaught, Catherine Freeman Nimitz, Flora and Morgan North, Kirk 0. Rowlands, Norma
Wilier, Quintilla Williams. 1976, 247 p.
Morley, Grace L. McCann (b.1900), Art, Artists, Museums, and the San Francisco Museum
of Art. 1960, 246 p.
Neuhaus, Eugen (1879-1963), Bay Area Art and the University of California Art Department.
1961, 48 p.
Norris, Kathleen (1880-1966), An Interview with Kathleen Harris. 1959, 48 p.
*Pepper, Stephen C. (1891-1972), Art and Philosophy at the University of California,
1919-1962. 1963, 471 p.
Quitzow, Charles, Sulgwynn Boynton Quitzow, OEloel Quitzow Braun, and Durevol Boynton
Quitzow, Dance at the Temple of the Wings, the Boynton-Quitzou Family in Berkeley.
Two volumes, 1973, 273 p.
Salz, Helen A. (b.1883), Sketches of an Improbable ninety Years. 1975, 272 p.
*Siegriest, Louis B. (b.1899) and Lundy (b.1925), Reminiscences. 1954, 95 p.
Stewart, George R. (b.1895), A Little of Myself . 1972, 319 p.
Turner, Ethel Duffy (1885-1969), Writers and Revolutionists. 1967, 60 p.
Wessels, Glenn (b.1895), Education of an Artist. 1967, 326 p.
Wood, Sara Bard Field, Poet and Suffragist. 1979, 661 p.
*Wurs ter, William W. (1895-1973), College of Environmental Design, University of California,
Campus Planning, and Architectural Practice. 1964, 325 p.
Zellerbach, H. L. (1894-1978) Art, Business, and Public Life in San Francisco. 1978, 256 p.
Also available: BOOKS AND PRINTING IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA series.
*The earlier interviews of the Regional Oral History Office must be reproduced from a
bound volume and therefore cost more to prepare. A cost estimate will be given upon
request. For further information contact the Regional Oral History Office, Room 486
Library, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720.
Interview with Helen Oldfield, Interview 1
Date of Interview: 14 January 1981
Interviewer: M. DuCasse
Transcriber: Matt Schneider
Begin tape 1, Side A
DuCasse: Well, I guess we should just begin at the beginning: where you
were born, and when.
Oldfield: Have you got it on?
DuCasse: Yes, it's on now.
Oldfield: I was born in 1902 on a farm about ten miles out of Santa Rosa.
My father was a hop grower. And I was born on the farm just shortly
before the 1906 earthquake. Well, it was several years. I shouldn't
say just shortly; that sounds as though it was the same year.
But it was 1902, and the earthquake was 1906.
DuCasse: Well, it was close enough.
Oldfield: Anyway, my earliest memories are of sleeping on the lawn outside
the house after the earthquake, when my mother was so frightened
that she wouldn't stay in the house, after the shaking up we got.
The earthquake was very strong in that area, too. Let me see;
what else of interest could I tell you.
DuCasse: Maybe a little about your mother and father? Did they come from
some other part of the country?
Oldfield: My father was a tenth generation American. His father had come to
California during the Gold Rush. My mother had British parents.
Her mother was born in Yorkshire, and her father in Devon. They
Oldfield: met in this country — that is, my grandparents — and married in
Illinois.
I have been told some things about this early period of my life,
which I can relate, but actually I have very, very slight memories.
I do remember one grandparent, my mother's mother, the little British
woman. She was the only grandparent I knew. The others didn't
survive until I was born.
DuCasse: That's the same with me. I never knew my grandparents.
Oldfield: I just knew one.
Cravath: And you had a British mother.
Oldfield: You had a British mother, too.
DuCasse: Yes. In fact, my grandfather was from Yorkshire, too.
Oldfield: I met your mother once, long ago. Maybe more than once. I don't
remember her very well. I used to go with a group of students, on
your father's invitation, when we were in his class at Arts and
Crafts.
DuCasse: I was planning to ask you that later on.
Oldfield: You were a little kid [laughter] with a very dark, dutch-cut hairdo.
I remember you as a little girl, and I didn't see you again for
many, many years. Of course, there's been a great deal of water
under the bridge before that.
DuCasse: Indeed. Well, we'll talk more about that later when we come
to your Arts and Crafts experience. But let's go back now to
that dear little English grandmother, and we can proceed from
there. You started to say she was the only one you knew.
Oldfield: She was the only one of my grandparents that I ever knew, because
she lived to be nearly ninety. Or maybe she was ninety; I don't
remember exactly how old she was. But she was around ninety when
she died. She died in 1935. And by this time, I was married and
had a couple of children of my own.
DuCasse: Oh, how lovely for her! So she knew her great-grandchildren.
Oldfield: Yes, she knew two. I now have two great-grandchildren of my own.
DuCasse: Oh, marvelous! Then you lived on the farm. How long were you on
the farm?
Oldfield: After the earthquake, which shook my mother up quite considerably,
my father built a house on another part of the farm. The house
where we lived at the time of the earthquake was a two-story,
frame house with brick chimneys that went up inside the walls.
Through the bedrooms on the second floor, these brick chimneys
went up inside. It happened that my parents had two cribs for
their two children, one on each side of their bed, and at the
head of each crib went up one of these brick chimneys . When the
earthquake came, those bricks all fell into the room, and right
over the sleeping children. This, I suppose, is what made it
so horrific for my mother. Anyway, she wouldn't live in that house
anymore.
So my father built a house for a temporary residence on
another part of the farm, a small house. We lived there for a
year while he was building what he conceived to be an earthquake-proof
house in the town. From then on, he was a town resident, who was
Oldfield: still farming.
The schools I went to were all in the town. I never went to the
country schools, except for short periods. In hop picking seasons
sometimes, I had to start school at the country school. But most
of my early schooling was in the town.
DuCasse: A city-dweller.
Oldfield: Well, compared to my cousins, who were all farmers, you see.
I went to grammar school there, and also there was an early
junior high school in the town, one of the first experimental
high schools. Because I was an obedient, good student, I got
through junior high with some already earned high school credit.
DuCasse: How marvelous! Do you, by any chance, remember the name of that
school?
Oldfield: The junior high? Santa Rosa Junior High School, that's all I
know. It was also on the same lot as the high school building.
It was very close. So I started in the seventh grade taking
German and French and algebra, and these were high school subjects.
So by the time I got into high school, I already had some high
school credits. This accounts for the fact that I finished
high school at the age of sixteen.
DuCasse: Isn't that splendid.
Oldfield: I don't know that it was splendid, but it just happened. I didn't
do anything except what came naturally.
Cravath: You've always done that, though. [laughter]
Oldfield: Anyway, I finished high school at the age of sixteen. It happened
Oldfield: that my father had had financial reverses at that time, and he
couldn't afford to send me to college. I really wanted to go to
art school, but my father was opposed to that idea because of
things that had happened in his family. He thought that women
who studied art came to no good ends. He didn't want me to go
into this.
I was an excellent math student, and I was accepted at Stanford
as a math major. But at the last minute, he couldn't afford to
send me. So it was postponed for a while. After two years,
during which my mother had a serious illness, he felt that I had
earned my right to do what was my first choice. So he financed
me to my first year at art school, which was Arts and Crafts when
it was over there on Alls ton Way. The old building.
DuCasse: Helen, when did you first know that you wanted to be an artist?
Do you remember?
Oldfield: I really can't remember for sure. I know it was quite early.
DuCasse: Before your high school experience?
Oldfield: Yes. Before high school.
DuCasse: I was interested, because sometimes this is a kernel within oneself
that finally comes out.
Oldfield: I knew very early in life. I remember having this awareness when
I was in the sixth grade. But I didn't get any encouragement at
home, because my father not only felt that women who studied art
came to no good ends, he was opposed to it because it was not a
remunerative profession. It wasn't practical, and it wasn't a very
Oldfield: dependable way to be self-sufficient. However, he made no objection
when I announced I was going to marry an artist.
DuCasse: That was certainly the climax of the whole thing, wasn't it?
[laughter] Retribution!
Oldfield: Well, he did finance my first year. Or maybe two — I'm not quite
sure about that — at art school. I had a friend who was a student
at Arts and Crafts, and old high school friend, and I boarded with
her family in Berkeley.
DuCasse: Who was that, Helen?
Oldfield: Her name was Edith Broadwell. You could find — although she isn't
Broadwell anymore; I've forgotten what her married name was. But
she might be in the rolls.
I think I started at Arts and Crafts in 1921.
Cravath: Strangely, that's the year I came to California.
Oldfield: During the time that I was first there, I first met your father.
I wasn't in his class at that time, because he was not burdened
with beginning students, you know. [laughter] I didn't get
into his class until I had been through the water color schedule,
and had become quite proficient in water colors . I remember Marty
stomping around the room saying, "Why do they start kids on water
color? It's a medium for masters!" I knew what he meant; but water
color didn't seem to do as much permanent damage. I think that was
the reason.
DuCasse: You also learn some good discipline in water color.
Oldfield: I guess so. I became quite good at water color. The teacher I
Oldfield: had was named Miss Rawlings , I think — Rawlings or Rollins. R-a-w.
I think it was Rawlings. Anyway, when she had to be absent, she
left me in charge of the class. So I got quite a reputation before
I ever got into Marty's class.
The first contact I had with him was life drawing. He had all
the little prints of Jerome's drawings around the room. He used
to get so annoyed with — most of his class were these fresh kids
just out of high school. I was always very serious and hardworking,
but he didn't have the same cooperation from everyone. He used to
stomp around the room, and he'd say, "You don't know who you have
for a teacher! Ask any of the great artists who Martinez is!"
DuCasse: Sounds like Marty! *
Oldfield: They didn't pay any attention to him at all. We did very, very
careful line drawings, just a line, a sensitive, delicate line.
He wanted no shading or anything except the outline of the figure.
It's the hardest way in the world to draw a nude.
DuCasse: Oh, it certainly is. Oh, yes indeed. You can't fudge on that.
Oldfield: You can't fudge on that. But he had the examples on the wall in
(studio in paris)
Jerome's . They were like that.
DuCasse: Yes, they were exquisite. How interesting, because by the time
I took his class in '26, he allowed us to do some shading.
Oldfield: Oh, he did?
DuCasse: He had evidently come around a bit to that.
Oldfield: Well, I think it was '21 or '22. I don't remember exactly when
I was in his drawing class. Then, of course, I went on to painting.
*"Marty" is Xavier Martinez. Micaela DuCasse is the daughter of
Xavier Martinez and Elsie Whitaker Martinez, subjects of "San Francisco
Bay Area Writers and Artists," an oral history conducted 1962-1963,
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley, 1969, 268 p.
8
Oldfield: The painting studio in that Alls ton Way building was way up in
the garret. It was a garret room.
Cravath: You've seen that place. Did you study there?
DuCasse: No, but I was a model for his class once.
Oldfield: In 1926 it would have been where it is now.
DuCasse: Yes, it was. I started at Broadway.
Oldfield: I was a student when we moved to Broadway. The students were —
I was about to say ordered — but we were all persuaded to put
physical effort into that move. I remember that I was busy with
a hoe, hoeing the weeds around the little area — I don't know whether
it was a parking area, or it was right next to the wall. But
anyway, I was out on the street, and I was busy with a hoe.
Somebody from across the street saw my industry, and came over
and offered me a job. [laughter] Offered me a job hoeing, I guess.
I don't know exactly what it was that I was going to do.
DuCasse: Nothing could be more practical than that!
Cravath: You see, Helen's always been practical.
Oldfield: Oh, have I? I'm not sure about that, Ruth.
Cravath: Well, maybe not. Maybe that should be qualified.
Oldfield: I got carried away, sometimes.
DuCasse: Well, we all do.
Oldfield: I remember that little studio, way up in the garret. There weren't
any beginning students inasmuch. I guess I must have been in my
second or third year before I found my way up there. Most of the
students were more experienced than I. But I was so dedicated, so
Oldfield: devoted, so intense about learning to paint that I would be there
early, and I never opened my mouth, I didn't chat at all. I worked,
so Marty used me as an example to the others. I never complained
about those old sprouting onions that you had in set-ups, and
everybody else would come in and say —
Cravath: The copper kettle —
Oldfield: The copper kettle and the sprouting onions.
DuCasse: I was still doing that when I was there in '26.
Oldfield: The class would come in, and they'd say, "Oh, look at that! Again!"
or "Still!" He would point out that I just got to work, I never
complained.
Then, later on — you want to do something else before we get into
my experiences with Marty?
DuCasse: No, no, that's fine.
Oldfield: I can go on into that. I'm going to jump quite a ways to the time
after I met Otis.
DuCasse: Unless there was anything important before you met Otis — you did
some work on your own before you met him, did you not?
Oldfield: Oh, yes, I did some work on my own, and I had a job in San Francisco.
I kept on going to school for quite a while.
DuCasse: I guess if went through '26, then you would have been there
about six years, altogether, wouldn't you?
Cravath: Helen, did you go to the California School of Fine Arts?
Oldfield: Yes, but I don't remember when I went to the California School of
Fine Arts. But I know that I was in Bufano's class at the California
10
Oldfield: School of Fine Arts — night class, because I was working then. I
was still living with my parents, whose house was on a little
dead end street right across Broadway from Arts and Crafts.
There was a gas station on the lot right across from the main
entrance. There's a little dead end street called Hemphill Place.
It comes up from below and doesn't go through to Broadway. Our
house was on that street. So after the school moved, I was very
close. I just went across the street.
After a while, I ran out of money, and I had to get a job.
I answered an ad in one of the papers, I guess the San Francisco
paper. Somebody who wanted what they called a sketch artist
to work in a sign company. They made electric signs, and bill
boards, posters, all kinds of stuff. Signboards — signs that were
painted by the sign painter on the board. They did those. So
I wrote a letter in answer to this ad. The ad was for a young man.
I wrote a letter saying, "Why does it have to be a young man?"
and gave my qualifications, and I got the job.
Cravath: Good for you. That was one of the first gestures.
Oldfield: That was when I first discovered about female harrassment. I
was very put out when I finally had to decide that I wasn't hired
entirely on the basis of my qualifications. The boss's son kept
trying to get me to go out to lunch with him. I refused. It
was the same old story that's still going on. Finally I decided
that I wasn't going to stay there anymore.
By this time, I'd had a good deal of experience. I had not
11
Oldfield: only made drawings of the project that the salesmen brought in,
but I had gone into the shop and laid out the signs themselves.
So I had learned what was needed by such companies. So I applied
for a job with another one. I just went for one interview, and
the fellow that was interviewing me put his arm around me and
asked me if I was broad-minded. I never went back.
Cravath: Good for you!
Oldfield: I never went back. I stayed on at that same place until I
married Otis.
DuCasse: Do you remember the name of that first place?
Oldfield: The first place was called the Novelty Sign Company. It was on
Turk Street. I lived in Oakland, so I used to walk up Market
Street to Turk Street, and a couple of blocks out Turk Street to
the shop.
DuCasse: You were a commuter on the ferryboats too, then.
Oldfield: Yes. I was a commuter. I loved that.
DuCasse: Wasn't that wonderful?
Oldfield: That was wonderful.
DuCasse: It's a lovely way.
Cravath: We used to get breakfast — those wonderful corn muffins on the —
Oldfield: I don't remember the breakfast. I remember having coffee once
in a while.
Cravath: They had the most wonderful corn muffins I've ever eaten anywhere!
Southern Pacific corn muffins. I used to love to get breakfast
on the ferry.
12
DuCasse: About how long, then, did you work at the sign company?
Oldfield: Let me see. If I started in '21, I was still going to — Oh, no,
I remember now. It was probably about 1923 that I started working
at the sign company. I'd had two years of art school. I worked
a year and had this experience of trying to find a job with another
company. The fortunes of the company where I was working fell
off a little bit. They didn't have enough business, I guess — they
weren't doing too well. So there wasn't enough work to keep mjf
busy all the time. So I asked for two days a week off. At first,
the boss was terribly upset: [gruffly] "I can't afford it; you're
not worth it."
I said, "Well, okay, then I'll quit."
He came back and said, [whining] "Well, I'm going to give it
to you, Miss Clark." So he gave it to me. I spent the two days
that I had off at Arts and Crafts. I think I was painting with
Marty, and doing design with Isabel West. Isabel and I were
good friends. I used to go to her house in Sausalito all the
time.
DuCasse: She would have appreciated the kind of student you were. You
were very conscientious, motivated.
Cravath: We didn't know each other in those days. I didn't know you until
I knew Otis.
Oldfield: The first time that I remember meeting you was in the Monfcy Block,
and you were next door to Otis. But we must have been in Bufano's
class at the same time.
13
Cravath: Not if you were in the night class. I was in the day class.
Oldfield: Oh, you weren't in the night class. No, I was only in the night
class. I was in his class at Arts and Crafts, too, with Monty.
Cravath: Monty went to the California School of Fine Arts, too, in the
class in the daytime.
Oldfield: Yes, but he was at Arts and Crafts, first.
DuCasse: Now, who was Monty?
Oldfield: Ward Montague. He was a sculptor. I remember Monty in that class
in Berkeley. It was in a little shed out in back of the building.
You know, the building was an old high school.
Cravath: That was Benny's sculpture class.
Oldfield: The sculpture class. Monty had modeled a head, and he put it
between two boards and flattened it. Benny asked him, "What did
you do that for?"
He said, "I was thinking of a very narrow-minded person."
[laughter] Isn't that marvelous?
Cravath: That's exactly like Monty.
DuCasse: Well, that's one way to accomplish it.
Oldfield: Yes, he just put it between two boards and squashed it.
Cravath: He had that wonderful sense of humor.
DuCasse: And you kept this up while you were working?
Oldfield: No, this was before I worked. This was during my first two years
there. I was a full-time student for two years. I think it was
two years — I'm sure it was two years. It wasn't long enough to
get a degree. During the time that I was a student there, they
14
Oldfield: started the degree program. Mr. Meyer urged me to work for a
degree. But by this time, I had met Otis, and Otis said, "Whoever
heard of an artist with a degree?" Sounds like the old-fashioned
artists, just going for academic degrees. A degree doesn't
guarantee your quality as an artist; you have to earn that
otherwise. And everybody knows it now. We think of it as a
help.
DuCasse: Well, it's just merely a tool.
Oldfield: A tool, and also it is a credential.
DuCasse: A credential on paper which someone can examine, and can evaluate
you.
Cravath: It doesn't make you a good artist necessarily.
Oldfield: It doesn't make you a good artist, and Otis liked to think that
it didn't guarantee that you were an artist at all.
DuCasse: This is probably quite true at times.
Oldfield: The paper credential he looked on with scorn. And I guess Marty
would have too. I never discussed that with him.
DuCasse: Yes, he did, because he didn't want me to get a degree. They
wanted me to take a teaching degree. He just blew his stack.
He said, "No, she's going to be trained the way I_ want her to
be trained. She's not going to have to be a teacher, or to be
anything. She's just going to be an artist." So, you see, he
and Otis were of the same school.
Oldfield: I turned against teaching because I saw that the people I started
with — my classmates at Arts and Crafts — were all going to be
teachers . I suspected them of doing it because they thought it
15
Oldfield: was safer. I had been turned off of teaching in my high school
days. I had a math teacher of whom I was very fond, and I was
*
one of the best students, so she was very good to me. She was
a beautiful young woman, and I looked at her with such great
admiration when I first knew her. But she had such problems
disciplining her class. And she had a lot of boys who weren't
interested in the subject, and they just baited her all the time.
They gave her a bad time. Said insulting things in loud enough
voices for her to hear, and dared her to discipline them, and
so on. So she was so filled with anger most of the time, that
as I looked at her, she turned from a very beautiful person into
an ugly person. I don't think she changed actually; it was the
way I saw her. Because I saw these angry moods all the time,
she didn't look beautiful anymore. So I thought then, "It this
is what teaching does to you, I don't want any part of it."
I think it was in the beginning of her teaching career that
she was filled with inspiration.
So this turned me off of teaching, and also my roommate,
whose family I was living with, was going into teaching. Oh,
and I saw also that after the first two years, they didn't do
any more studying of art. They had to learn teaching techniques,
They went up to the campus for classes on —
DuCasse: To Cal?
Oldfield: Yes. We were very close; we were just across Oxford Street.
I remember Mr. Officer, who taught the mechanical drawing
16
Oldfield: classes, was in the architecture department at Cal. He would
come down. He used to come down from there. My classmates
who were preparing to be teachers spent half their time on the
Cal campus. They were not present in the drawing and painting
classes at all anymore. They had to take things like sewing,
and all of the crafts which were offered at Arts and Crafts,
because Mr. Meyer was a craftsman, you know. He felt that the
crafts were as important as the fine arts, and he stressed
them. He offered classes in just about everything you could
think of. I guess that's the reason that Arts and Crafts is
more dedicated to crafts still than the Art Institute.
DuCasse: Yes, it's more of a technical school. It's always maintained its-
Cravath: And it's tighter, too.
Oldfield: And that's the reason, because Frederick Meyer, who started it,
was a craftsman.
DuCasse: Then his wife was a teacher, she had been a teacher
[end tape 1, side A]
17
[Begin tape 1, side B]
Oldfield: I remember Mrs. Meyer coming into the classroom and giving us a
lecture on chewing gum. She chewed gum herself furiously; but
she said, "You can chew gum like a lady." I guess she meant by
that you don't open your mouth — that's chewing gum like a lady.
But I had been taught that ladies don't chew gum. And I'm sure
I wasn't the only one.
DuCasse: A few years later she was going against cigarette smoking for ladies,
She graduated. She disapproved of that totally.
Oldfield: She couldn't disapprove of gum, because she was addicted to it
herself. So she had her own ploy. But she was such a sweet,
*
generous-hearted little woman. She was so kind to those students.
So many of them were hard up; they wanted to go to art school, and
there was quite a population of what they called D.A.V. students.
Those were Disabled American Veterans. You see, it was right
after World War I —
Cravath: We called them Federal Board Students at the California School
of Fine Arts.
DuCasse: I remember my father talked about that.
Oldfield: That reminds me of Walt Kuhn saying that Lucien Labaudt was a
government whore, because he worked WPA. [laughter]
DuCasse: So you had these fellows from World War I.
Oldfield: Yes, and they were quite a population at the school. I think
18
Oldfield: that they were very important to the financial stability of the
school, because a lot of the other students were people who were
either trying to make a living, or earn the money to pay their
tuition at the same time that they went to school, or were casting
around for scholarships or someplace to borrow it, because they
really didn't have any financial background that may have been
stable.
DuCasse: I imagine that the Meyers did a lot of work scholarships around
the place for the students.
Oldfield: Yes, they did. Louis Miljaridfc a working scholarship when I
was there. He was one of the janitors. He had a working scholar
ship. That was still going on when Otis was teaching there, after
World War II.
But Mrs. Meyer was the one who engineered that. She was so
warm-hearted and generous and kind that she couldn't turn anyone
away. In spite of her hang-ups about gum, she was a wonderful
person. [laughter]
DuCasse: Yes, she was indeed.
Oldfield: I knew Babs as a young girl. She was there.
Cravath: Was that her daughter?
Oldfield: That was the Meyers' daughter.
DuCasse: Babs was such a frail-looking, ethereal-looking girl.
Oldfield: She was in high school, I think. Yes, she was terribly over-pro
tected. But she managed to weather it okay.
DuCasse: She is a sweet person. She's still with us.
19
Oldfield: Do we go on to what happened to me after I left Arts and Crafts,
after I married Otis?
DuCasse: Absolutely, if you feel you've told us enough about your own art
student's work. While you were doing your commercial job, and
after maybe you had stopped going to classes, were you doing any
of your own work while you were working?
Oldfield: Yes, I was always painting. This takes me back to another little
incident which involves Marty. I met him one night in the Ferry
Building. I had been in his classes at Arts and Crafts for two
or three years. I don't think I still was — yes, I had to be,
because when I met him, it was in the Ferry Building; we were
both headed for the Piedmont train. So we rode over on the train
together. I talked to him about Otis, and he said he had met him.
Shortly after that, I was recruited by Otis. I was a night
student at the old California School of Fine Arts, up where the
Mark Hopkins Hotel is. Otis had just come back from France.
That was where I first saw him, as a matter of fact. He used to
come up there and recruit students for a private class that he
had in the old Artists' Building. It was in a studio which was
occupied by Clifford White, and — what was her name?
Cravath: Wasn't it on Sacramento Street?
Oldfield: Yes, it was in the old Artists' Building. Leidesdorf and
Sacramento. Carol Wirtenberger and Clifford White had a studio
there. Otis had his first San Francisco class in that studio.
I remember Monty and UresJca were in the class. Helen Moya, who
was Helen Horst at that time, and her sisters — they came, driven
20
Oldfield: by the chauffeur. I used to go after my day's work. I would go
and stop there and paint in that class. I took some of the
paintings that I did to Marty's class, and showed them to him.
He had already told me he knew Otis, and I thought he'd be
interested in what I was doing, and he was. But he looked at
them and he said, "Hm. Picasso, but not understood!" [laughter]
DuCasse: He was a man of few words.
Oldfield: I was a little bit crushed, but not totally. I kept on going to
Otis' class —
DuCasse: I'm sure Otis didn't tell you things like that.
Oldfield: No, not at that time, anyway. He told me some pretty brutal
things later. Not at that time. And of course, I probably didn't
understand what I was doing. I remember that Otis had some very
weird hang-ups about painting at that time. He liked to paint
things that were under a table, because the table cast a shadow,
made a half light. He would set up his still life studies under
the table. I used to take in the things that I had done on my own.
One day I took in something that had a glass pitcher or something
in it. I showed it to him, and he said, "Oh! I had a dream about
that! I dreamed that somebody painted glass. Don't ever show
me anything like that again!" It's so tricky: all those high
lights, all the little intricacies of glass — he disapproved of
that. It wasn't direct; it wasn't a simple statement: he didn't
like it.
I went on painting on my own. But I still had, until I met Otis,
21
Oldfield: this hang-up about the sanctity of oil paints, which I got, I think,
from having been started out in water color, and prohibited from
using oil paint until I was an advanced student. But Otis sure
knocked it out of me: he wouldn't have anything to do with water
color. He was even worse than Marty. Marty said it was a medium
for masters; and Otis felt that it was a tricky, impermanent medium.
It was tricky. He was always afraid of anything tricky. Anyway —
I say "anyway" all the time. Your tape is going to be full of those
"anyways."
DuCasse: Well, you haven't said too many. It's all right. It's a little
predictable.
Oldfield: That's why I say it. But it's a pretty obvious and stupid remark.
DuCasse: It hasn't grated on my ears yet.
Oldfield: You tell me if it does. I'll try to avoid it. Now, where do we
go from here?
DuCasse: You were in Otis' class, that special class — how did your romance
come about? Was it a long time?
Oldfield: I must tell you the story of the first time that I saw him. It
was at the night school in that old building up on Nob Hill. I
was in Spencer Macky's drawing class at that time. That was after
the time that I was in the sculpture class. But I always went
at night until after Otis started teaching there. I went to
his classes sometimes with him. But I was always a night student
at the San Francisco school, because I was working downtown.
I would go at night. The first class that I had was Bufano's
22
Oldfield: night sculpture class. Then I moved into the life drawing class
of Spencer Macky. All the life drawing I had done up to that
time was with Marty, and it was just this very delicate line.
I had never built a figure the way I learned to do it in Macky 's
class at all. It had always been that very delicate, descriptive
line. It had to be delicate to please him, and had to be meaningful.
I don't know that I ever achieved it, but I tried.
Anyway, I was in this night life drawing class; it met three
evenings a week for three hours . On Fridays there was a break
which was supposed to be for an anatomy lecture. There was an
assembly room. Spencer would stand there holding the hand of the
skeleton, and reminiscing about how his wife put him to sleep when
she read to him in bed. He didn't get to anatomy very much.
O
I had had . for anatomy, and I knew all the names
of all the bones, and all the muscles — their popular names and
their Latin names — I had really had a workout in anatomy. So I
didn't need to hear what Spencer was talking about at all. He
hardly ever touched on anatomy.
One night we went in there — the model stopped posing while
Spencer was lecturing. So everybody either sat in an empty studio
until he was through or trooped into the lecture hall and listened
to him. I went and listened to him, and I went with a group. We
walked in, and we saw that there were a lot of people in street-
clothes there; it wasn't all students. There were a lot of people
in there. We knew some of them; I remember the Blendings were
23
Oldfield: there, and Gertrude Albright and her husband. A lot of the
people that I knew were practicing artists, and not students.
So we knew something was up. Sure enough, Spencer got up and
said he met this most interesting person who had just come back
from a long sojourn in France, and he introduced Otis. That
was the first time I saw him.
Cravath: He was formally introduced.
Oldfield: He was formally introduced. So I sat there and listened to him
talk. I don't remember a word of what he said, but I remember
that at the end, one of the artists who were present, asked
him, "Do you mean to say that it isn't necessary to use a brush
to paint?"
And Otis said, "No, put it on with an old shoe if you feel like
it!" He was way ahead of his time, because after a while they did
that. But this was in the early twenties. There wasn't any
blob and splash painting around at that time, at least not
here.
Anyway, that was my introduction to him. Then after that,
he used to drop in to the night classes and talk. Do you remember
Frank Dunham ? He was a student in the drawing class
where I was, and he and a few others, like Julius Palmer, sometimes,
when we didn't go into the anatomy lecture, we would sit around
the studio and talk. I remember both of them told me they
thought Otis was crazy. They both thought he was crazy because
his claims were fantastic to them. They thought that he was
24
Oldfield: making claims that he couldn't possibly fulfill. Anyway, I remember
that.
During one of the visits, when Otis came in he told me that he
was about to have a show at the old Beaux Arts gallery.
Cravath: I remember that show well.
Oldfield: Do you remember that show?
Cravath: Oh, yes!
Oldfield: I was working, and I worked half the day Saturday. So, on my way
home one Saturday when I knew that that show was on, I stopped in
at the gallery. Remember there was a little stairway that went
up from Maiden Lane, and there was a little landing where Bea Ryan
had a little Chinese table and a couple of chairs. When I went
in, Otis was sitting there at that little table smoking his pipe.
I couldn't get in because the door to the gallery was closed.
He said, "Oh, they're talking about me in there; it embarrasses
me." That was another thing that I thought was kind of silly later
because he never got embarrassed at anything! [laughter] Anyway,
he was sitting outside while Bea was talking about his show.
He sort of cornered me, like the wedding guest. I had to sit
down in the other chair, and he talked and he talked and he talked;
I was spellbound. He wouldn't let me go. And, do you know, he
didn't remember he had seen me before. He just cornered me and
wouldn't let me go in because he was bored: he wanted somebody
to talk to. So I never got in to see the show at that time. I
saw it later.
Cravath: I remember that show very well.
25
Oldfield: So that was the second time I saw him; and that time I actually met
him. Then I think it was a couple of years — no, it couldn't have
been that long — it could have been over a year, anyway, after that
before he started writing me notes and inviting me to his studio.
By that time he had moved down from Sacramento and had a studio
in the MonkeySlock. He used to write me notes, and invite me to
come and see the latest paintings. So I made several visits to his
studio. I had been his student briefly in that studio of Carol
Wirtenberger's ; but that had come to an end quite a long while before.
However, he had my name and address, I guess, so he started writing
me notes. I went to the studio.
Then he started inviting me to go places with him. I remember
one of the first dates that I had with him; he had an old car by
this time, and we were driving somewhere south of the city, down
the peninsula somewhere on a road that was a sort of a back road,
a dirt road. He had a flat tire, and he didn't know how to change
it. But I did. I told him how to get the jack out and jack up
the car. [brief telephone interruption] I've forgotten where
we were.
DuCasse: You were talking about Otis —
Oldfield: Oh, and changing the tire for him. I was knowledgeable about it
because I'd helped my father many times. He had never changed a
tire before. He was aghast! He thought he was going to have to
walk to the nearest garage to get some help. I got out and helped
him.
26
Oldfield: Some young people drove by — some really collegiate types — and they
yelled at me, "Atta girl!" [laughter]
DuCasse: You were very modern.
Oldfield: Yes, I was very modern. It was the era of very short skirts, you
know, so I guess I was pretty conspicuous. Anyway, I helped him
change a tire. That was the first date we had.
Then we started going on trips to various places, in the country
mostly. He charmed me by singing little French love songs to me
and all that sort of stuff.
DuCasse: That would make a big impression.
Oldfield: Yes, it made a big impression on me. I was just a kid from the
country at that time. The French flavor impressed me to begin with.
And he knew all these charming little songs. He didn't sing, but
he sang it well enough to get the idea over. I remember once we
were sitting in a little family cemetery which was near the farm
where I was born — it wasn't on it, but it was in that area — I had
shown him this little cemetery that was rather neglected. He
afterwards made quite a number of drawings of it. It apparently made
an impression on him. We were sitting there; I think we'd brought a
picnic lunch, and we were sitting eating the lunch there. He
started singing these sentimental little French songs.
This developed into a companionship which pretty much shut
me off from almost everyone else for a while, because he monopolized
my time. He used to get very angry if I was late to an appointment.
DuCasse: Did you usually take drives out in the country?
27
Oldfield: Yes. He had a little old Chevy — I have some pictures of it —
it looks like a crackerbox on wheels, by the standards of the
way cars look now. It was a little Chevy. It was what he called
a "two-and-a-half seater." I mean, there was a little place behind —
there was a bench seat for the driver and one passenger, and
behind, there was room for somebody else to squeeze in, but just
one other person.
Cravath: They called that a flip seat — or something.
Oldfield: Anyway, he had this. He drove it very recklessly. I had been
driving for quite a long while, and it was the first car he had
ever owned. Somebody told him when you hit cordouroy road, one
that's very bumpy, what you do is step on the gas and hit the
high spot. So we were driving on a back road once among some farms,
and he took it literally and stepped on the gas, and he hit a little
pig and killed it. Oh, he was so upset. Also, he thought that he
had turned me off on him for good, because I was upset too. I
looked back and saw this poor little thing in the road. This
thing of stepping on the gas was so totally wrong!
DuCasse: But he found that out, didn't he?
Oldfield: Yes, he found it out eventually.
DuCasse: How long do you think your courtship lasted, more or less?
Oldfield: We were married in November of 1926. That was a little more than
two years after he landed here from France. I don't know how long
he had been back that first night when he lectured at the school.
And there was some time between that and the time when I started
28
Oldfield: seeing him quite regularly. So I would say the courtship lasted
about a year. I wouldn't, certainly, begin it from the time I
first saw him, or even include the time:/when I sat and talked
to him while Bea Ryan was lecturing in the other room. From
that until the time he started writing me notes was quite a
while. The short period when I was in his class in Carol Wirtenberger's
studio came in between there.
*
DuCasse: So it was more personal when he began writing you those notes.
His personal interest began to manifest itself to be a courtship.
Oldfield: Then it began.
DuCasse: After you were married, where did you live? In San Francisco?
Cravath: Let me interrupt here, dear, because that wedding is something
that's worthy of quite a bit of coverage. I'll never forget
Helen and Otis's wedding in Ralph Stackpole's stoneyard.
DuCasse: Helen, would you like to give us a description of that?
Oldfield: Yes, I can do it. I usually show the scrapbook when people want
to know about it, because it's more complete. But I can reminisce
about it a little bit and tell you something about it. At the
time — it was November 30, 1926 — Dorothea Lange had a photography
studio in the upstairs studio, which was the studio that Ruth later
had. It was Ralph Stackpole's studio. At the time that we were
married, Dorothea Lange was renting it, and she was doing photo
graphy there. In fact, I have a picture of Otis and me in the
bedroom that she took there.
When we decided to get married, my family was a little disturbed
29
Oldfield: because it was taken completely out of their hands. When Otis
announced to Ralph that there was going to be a wedding, Ralph
said, "I want it in the studio."
The decorations were by Stafford Duncan and Lucien Labaudt, and
Stack, I guess — I don't know who else. There were Chinese banners
hanging from the wall.
DuCasse: Think of that, against those brick walls!
Oldfield: They set up a tree trunk which Ralph was planning to carve, that
was in the studio, as the altar. Two ribs from an old Gold Rush
days ship, which had been excavated there in the early days.
Ralph had saved them. So they set them up and made a Gothic arch
out of them. From the peak of the arch, they had wired three rusty
horseshoes that dangled from the peak of the arch. The altar was
decorated with Autumn garden splendor — corn, squash — all very colorful.
DuCasse: Beautiful. The fruits of the earth.
Oldfield: That was when I met Henry Ohlhoff .
Cravath: He was the one that performed the ceremony, wasn't he?
Oldfield: Yes. Henry Ohlhoff at that time was the vicar of the little church
of St. Mary the Virgin, which is a fashionable church now. He was
the vicar there at the time. He performed the ceremony. It was a
high church.
People congregated in Dorothea's studio upstairs. Then there was
a rickety old stairway that went down from there to the stoneyard
where the ceremony took place. Ellen Dear, with a piano, played
wedding march up in the studio, and I came down the stairs with
30
Oldfield: the one attendant that I had. We came down the stairs, and my
father was waiting at the foot of the stairs, and took me to
the altar where Otis was. It was eight o'clock in the evening;
it was very dark. They had illuminated the yard with Chinese
lanterns and brick soaked in kerosene set on fire. It was really
a sort of a pagan setting.
Henry Ohlhoff was in his fanciest robe, and the whole thing
was the traditional wedding ceremony. I had a granddaughter
who was married
[end tape 1, side B; begin tape 2, side A]
Oldfield: . at two of my granddaughter's
weddings .
Cravath: Always worth attending. If you get an invitation, do accept it.
Oldfield: I'm not going to be anymore for a little while.
DuCasse: Why don't you tell us about your wedding dress?
Oldfield: It was black.
Cravath: That's all I remember.
had
Oldfield: It was black because Otis this disciple, a very devoted disciple,
and Chinese boy named ^Un Gee.
Cravath: Did you see his show over at the Oakland museum?
Oldfield: Yun 's mother was in China. Yun ancl Otis had spent the summer
31
Oldfield: of 1926 on a painting trip into the Sierras. They went to Sutter's
Fort, and the southern mines mostly — in Otis' little jalopy.
They both painted. Yun., was very devoted to Otis; he couldn't
do enough for him. So when he heard that he was going to be
married, he wrote to his mother in China, and she wove the silk
for the wedding dress. But when it came, it was black. White
is mourning in China. It should have been red? Why didn't she
make it red? I don't know. It was black, anyway. But she didn't
know it was the color of mourning here. So I made my dress of it
anyway .
It was just a simple sort of a shift, a little bit shaped, with
an off -shoulder neckline.
Cravath: Do you still have it, Helen?
Oldfield: Oh, no, I don't have the dress. I remodeled it and made a maternity
dress out of it! [laughter] There's a practical side to everything.
Cravath: I told you she was practical.
DuCasse: Well, that's good. There are not many wedding dresses that can
be adapted to that kind of thing. Very good. You were very sensible.
Oldfield: I don't know how I did it, but I did. I put some gussets in,
no doubt. And it was still pretty tight at the end, I'm sure.
DuCasse: You had a very beautiful traditional ceremony. Then I suppose
you must have had a party afterwards
Cravath: We danced in the Modern Gallery. Do you remember the Modern Gallery?
DuCasse: No, I don't believe I do.
32
Cravath: It was adjacent to the stoneyard. We danced in the Modern Gallery.
It was very fashionable.
Oldfield: And Yun 's paintings were on the wall. The music, as I remember,
was a drum, an acordion, and what was the other — a horn, or a violin?
There were three instruments. It was loud, and there was a lot of
stomping. The pictures that were hanging in the little gallery were
all cockeyed by the end of the party. I remember that someone
said to Yun , "Doesn't it bother you what this has done to your
pictures?"
He said, "Oh, no, it just gives them movement!" [laughter]
That it did.
DuCasse: Well, you were his good friends; how could he care?
Oldfield: Later, he went to Paris. He went, I think, the next year. I
think it was '27. I have recently gotten to know his widow, who
is also named Helen, and who came out here for his show at the
Oakland Museum. We got together, and she has visited me several
times. She told me, I think, that it was '27 when he went to
Paris. I remember the day he left, seeing him walk down the street
with Otis. He had fitted himself out to be a Chinese carbon copy:
he'd gotten the beret; he had a suit made that was as close as
it could be, identical to the one that Otis wore most of the time;
he'd gotten a cane and a pipe — everything in imitation of Otis.
It was very funny — I walked behind them on Montgomery Street on
Telegraph Hill the day he left. It was so funny to see this.
The beret stuck up on top of that wiry Chinese hair; it wouldn't
33
Oldfield: fit down on his head at all. The one that he had bought had not
had that little thread that comes out of the top, so he got a piece
of yarn and sewed it on. He had to have everything exact. And
he wore it the way Otis did. Otis wore his beret differently than
has been popular since: he pulled it down over his brow to his
eyes. Sometimes he would pull it up and back and make a little visor
out of it when he was painting.
DuCasse: You mentioned his clothing that his protege copied. What kind of
a suit did he use?
Oldfield: It was a very simple suit, and it was made of a fabric which was
sort of what you would call pepper-and-salt, only that it was
mostly pepper — it was dark. It was, in effect, a very dark, dark
grey, flecked with a little bit of lighter color of some kind.
But it was a dark suit. It looked like a dark suit.
Cravath: I remember the overcoat Otis wore.
Oldfield: The one he brought back from France.
Cravath: It was big and heavy, and it came back from France, and it had
the velvet collar — you remember this? — it was long, and sort of
fitted.
Oldfield: Double-breasted.
DuCasse: It looked so smart, I'm sure.
Cravath: I remember him in that.
Oldfield: He had very different hats, too. They had been made for him in
France. They were formal-looking. They weren't derbies —
Cravath: This coat was formal -looking —
34
Oldfield: And they went with it. And he always wore spats — do you remember
that too? — and carried a cane.
DuCasse: He must have been quite well turned out.
Oldfield: This was the way he was turned out when I first knew him. But
he changed from that, and turned to khaki army pants, and fatigues,
and he always wore gloves at first. He came to the conclusion that
in America that everything was crude and unfeeling, and he didn't
feel that he was going to waste himself on these people. One of
the things that did this to him was a story that he used to like to
tell about when he first returned from France. He lived with his
parents for a short time in Sacramento. He used to like to go to
movies. One night he was walking home from a movie, and a couple
of policemen stopped him and said, "Who are you and where are you
going?"
He said, "I'm just a peaceful citizen walking home from a movie?"
Then they said, "Why don't you dress like other people?"
It made him so mad. He was wearing his French clothes, and
carrying his cane, and his spats, and the whole thing. It just
made him awfully mad.
DuCasse: I don't blame him. To think that it started that early. Did
he wear his dark suit at his wedding?
Oldfield: I think he did. This was the first suit that he had made in this
country. His French suits looked so strange he had to discard them.
They were fitted at the waist; the jackets were longer that we're
used to; and the placket in back went all the way up to the waist.
Cupid Steals Her Palette
STUDENT TO
ART REBEL
,34 a
HELEN 5
REGINA \
CLARK.
Oakland girl
artist, who will
wed in a riot .
of color and
Bohemian
atmosphere.
• her fiance,
Otii Oldfield.
finding the con
ventional to
hit distaste.
The artist
,. colony is
planning »
revel.
rf Helen Regina Clark, Oak
land, and Otis Oldfield
to Wed in Bohemian
Ceremony at Studio
Cupid took the »tand a* model
In the life class of Otis Oldfield,
36, artistic ' revolutionary, and
Helen Regina Clark,' 24. Eastbay
artist, and former student of Old-
field. The artists will be married
In the court studio of a fellow
artist, Ralph Stackpole. 716 Mont
gomery street, San Francisco.
Oldfield, who lives at 628 Mont
gomery street, San Francisco, and
whose brush has reflected his de
fiance of the conventional and has
caused considerable comment, will
not be married In the conventional
style.
The arrangement were left large
ly to Stackpole, and the ceremony
will take place In the court dec
orated with wild cherry and white
roses, with candle lanterns and .a
large bonfire In the center fur
nishing the light. A Bohemian at
mosphere will predominate in all
but the actual ceremony, which is
to be performed by Rev. Henry
Ohlaff of Palo Alto.
About seventy-five guests, nearly
all from the artist colony, will see
the bride given away by her father,
James E. Clark, of 318 Hemphill
place. Oakland. She will be at
tended by Miss Lucille Duff of
San Luis Oblcpo.
Brush, pencil and chisel wleld-
ers will revel In Bohemian style
and rejoice with the bride and
bridegroom.
Following the ceremony, the wed
ding party will dance at the Mod-
ery Gallery which Is the building
adjoining the court studio, and
will be -arranged with a distinctly
Bohemian atmosphere. /
35
Oldfield: So it was like a bodice with a little skirt on it. They looked
very strange here. So he had to discard them. He may have
been wearing one of those when we were married. I don't really
remember what he was wearing. I'm lucky to remember what I was
wearing! How could I forget?
DuCasse: That was unusual.
Oldfield: One of the society reporters called me and asked for details
about the wedding before it happened. And when I told her I
was going to wear black, she hung up on me. She thought I was
pulling her leg. She did it again when our oldest daughter was
married .
Cravath: The same woman?
Oldfield: No. I don't think it was the same woman. But it happened again,
this was twenty years later. It happened that when Rhoda and
her first husband were getting ready to be married, they wanted
Henry Ohlhoff to perform the ceremony again, for sentimental
reasons. So I called him and asked him if he would do it, and
he said, "Sure, sure. Where are going to have it?"
I said, "We're planning it here at home, a small ceremony with
just a few people."
He said, "Why don't we have it down here?" At this time, he
was at the Canon Kip Mission. He said, "This chapel is very small
here, and there are no chairs, but it's dominated by Ray Boynton's
mural." He said, "I would love to have it here, and I'm sure
that it would be all right with everybody in your family."
36
Oldfield: So I talked to the kids, and they said, "Sure, that's fine."
They didn't care where it was. So we had it at the little chapel
in Canon Kip Mission. There were very few people invited. There
was really hardly room for the whole family. Actually, I think the
only people who were invited besides the two families were
Rhoda's godparents.
Anyway — there we go again — at that time, Pierre Salinger was
on the society page of the Chronicle. I think he was the head of
it — I'm not sure. Rhoda had a part time job working there. She
was going to college, but she had a part time job at the Chronicle
which she had gotten through Pierre. So they published an account
of the engagement. Pierre, and Eddie Haug,whom she was marrying,
were very close friends. So they published a little account of
it, and it got into the society editor's hands that way. I
received a call, and was questioned about the details of the
wedding. And when I told the woman that it was going to be at
the Canon Kip Mission, she hung up. [laughter] Thought I was
pulling her leg.
DuCasse: Isn't that the strangest thing!
Oldfield: It's rather interesting that it happened both times. It didn't
surprise me much the second time. I was puzzled the first time,
because I didn't know why, except that I did know, of course, that
black was an unusual color to be married in. But why should she
think that I was pulling her leg. Anyway, it was obvious that I
was not. So there was no coverage of that second wedding. But
37
Oldfield: there was plenty of coverage of the first one, but it wasn't much
in the society page, they were news.
Cravath: I think I still have the clipping; I'm not sure.
Oldfield: Well, I've got a whole scrapbook of them.
DuCasse: Someday I'd love to look at your scrapbook when we have more time.
Oldfield: But you can't do that and do this, too.
DuCasse: Well, we'll do that another time. After your wedding, then, you
lived in San Francisco, did you continue working?
Oldfield: Oh, yes. I have always continued working. Not very much some
of the time, because I promptly had two children. I remember
trying to work while they were napping. They would wake up, and
I would be cross with them. My conscience bothered me; I thought
it isn't fair to them. So I gave up trying to work when they
were sleeping. And there wasn't very much other time. Then I
started going with Otis to the art school went he went to his
classes. I was free to go anywhere, although he didn't feel that
I should I go anywhere. He wanted me to work in his classroom
and I usually did, but not always. I was free to go into other
classes if I wanted to. But I painted a lot there. However,
until very near the end of his life, he consciously tried to
influence me to work with oil paints, and not to draw. I eventually
came to the realization that what I wanted to do was to draw,
and that this was really my medium more than oil paints because
I'm a linear person. I like to draw with charcoal, which isn't
really linear, but I am a linear person. And he wasn't, and he
was prejudiced against the kind of work that I naturally wanted to do,
38
Oldfield: Eventually, I understood that I should do what I wanted to do.
I started drawing, and I would be drawing in here while he was
working in his studio. He would come in, look at what I was
doing, "I wish I could do that." And that was amazing.
DuCasse: That was a great compliment.
Oldfield: It was amazing, because he was a fine draftsman, as Ruth will tell
you. His collection of drawings are really impressive. He could
draw. But he believed in seeing in terms of mass. He was contemptuous
of what I tried to do, at least for a long time he was. He was not
only contemptuous, he tried to prevent me from doing it. He in
sisted that I paint. Of course, this was his medium, and he con
tinued in it for all of his life. It was his first love. But he
was very skillful at drawing.
DuCasse: Oh, yes. But there's no doubt about it: there's a great difference
between the point of view of the painter — the painter-ly painter, who
sees things in mass —
Oldfield: Mass and color.
DuCasse: And the linear artist, who sees the beautiful clear outlines, and
who perhaps doesn't always feel a need to fill them in. Or if
fla"fc
they're filled in, they're — that's probably why you did so well with
water color. That's very close to the linear concept, the clarity,
wouldn't you say?
Oldfield: I would say that the water color that I did — this woman that taught
me at Arts and Crafts was what they called at that time an English
water color. It was ar«as of color. You have to work in the wet
39
Oldfield: paint, you know. I never even did any defining with line in the
things I did in her class. I think I've got a couple of them tucked
away somewhere in a portfolio, but it would take too long to find
them.
I think that it took me a long, long time to realize that I
see in line. I didn't know it; and I don't know whether Marty
had an influence on me, because I certainly began with lines under
his influence.
Cravath: There's a couple of your drawings hanging in the guest room, so
she could see some of your line drawings.
Oldfield: Yes, there's that one of the hippo that's right at the foot of
your bed. It isn't hanging there. I have some better ones in the
studio, I think, and of course, over there in the kitchen.
Everything is in the kitchen of mine.
DuCasse: I can see from here the really—
Oldfield: Of course, that's Otis, that painting. But this one is mine.
He not only saw in mass and color, but also volume was very
important to him.
DuCasse: You can see that in his work very definitely. He has a sense of
volume — very, very much. so.
Oldfield: Yes, you can see it in his paintings.
DuCasse: It's interesting the contrast between you both. I think probably
that was that marvelous harmony that must have set up between you,
because you were so different in a sense.
Oldfield: Yes, harmony and disharmony. But they go together. But the thing
40
Oldfield: that he did—
DuCasse: I should have said complementary.
Oldfield: Yes, I understand. He did feel that it was quite reasonable of him
to influence me. And I was obedient, and also I had respect and
admiration for him, and I was easy to influence. So many years went
by when I worked under his aegis, and that's why that painting was
mistaken for one of his.
I had another little funny experience in that context. I think
it was the first summer after we were married — we went on a camping
trip down into the Owens Valley. We both painted. And we had some
little paintboxes that were just big enough to hold a palette and a
small board that you could hold in your hand or set on your lap.
His was a little bit larger, and mine was a smallish one. When we
came back, apparently I left one of mine in the smaller box, and
it was put away, and hadn't been used for a number of years. Then
he wanted to use it for something. He took the painting out and
set it up on a table or somewhere in the house. I walked into the
room and said, "When did you do that?" And it was mine. [laughter]
So you see it was a very, very strong influence.
Cravath: You can see it there.
DuCasse: Yes, definitely in that line painting, you certainly can.
Oldfield: If I would show you some of his landscapes of that country, it
looks very much —
DuCasse: Well, it's very like the one that you have, Ruth.
Oldfield: The person who looked at it, who was an admirer of his from way
41
Oldfield: back, came over because she wanted to buy one of his paintings.
I tried to show her some, and for some reason she didn't see one
that she liked that she wanted to buy. But she looked at that
and said, "I'll give you $300 for that one. Too bad he didn't
sign it."
Cravath: Too bad you didn't take the three hundred.
Oldfield: I've been very sorry since that I didn't say, "Sold."
DuCasse: Of course! She never would have known the difference.
Oldfield:. But then she said, "Too bad he didn't sign it." She would have
wanted the signature — what would I do? Forge his name, or sign
mine? She wouldn't have wanted it if I'd signed mine, and I don't
like to forge his name.
DuCasse: I don't blame you.
Oldfield: So it probably wouldn't have been a sale anyway, although at the
time I could have used the $300.
DuCasse: I'm sure you could. Couldn't we all.
Oldfield: Yes, well, $300 isn't very much these days, but it's something.
And at that time, it was quite a bit more than it is now.
DuCasse: Did either of your children have talent?
Oldfield: The youngest one is now in her middle age, starting to be very
interested inprin"tmaking . That little thing over there is hers.
She didn't do it before because she grew up equating art with
poverty, and she rejected it totally. She didn't want anything to
do with it. Although she had encouragement from both of us all
the way through.
DuCasse: A little bit of her grandfather was coming out.
42
Oldfield: Maybe. [laughs] The other one married a musician. She has
directed her adult interest into music. She was librarian for
the Berkeley little symphony at one time. Did you ever encounter
that group?
DuCasse: No, unfortunately I didn't. But I've heard of them.
Oldfield: Her husband was active in that group, and he is now married to the
ex -wife of the then conductor.
Cravath: Did you follow that one?
Oldfield: It's complicated, it's very complicated.
DuCasse: But that's modern. That's the way things work now.
Oldfield: Yes, well, my oldest daughter is married for the third time.
And my youngest daughter has married the same man three times.
I don't know which is the cukoo-est.
DuCasse: All I can say is they're in style. [laughter]
Oldfield: Yes, they're in style, I guess.
Cravath: Anyway, the eldest daughter, I think, landed on her feet with
this last marriage. I like him very much.
Oldfield: But she is out of the arts now totally, except for her —
DuCasse: This was the musician?
Oldfield: The musician was her first husband. Her third husband flies for
American Airlines. They live in Chicago. Her second husband was
a tennis pro. And she still wins tennis tournaments for grand
mothers. She has a whole shelf full of trophies.
DuCasse: How was Otis with his children?
Oldfield: Totally indifferent when they were little, but very proud when
43
Oldfield: they became adults. He looked at them one day, and said to me,
"Where did these marriageable young women come from?"
DuCasse: Isn't that wonderful? They just suddenly appeared!
Oldfield: They suddenly appeared, and he was very proud of them at that time,
and liked to show them off. But he was indifferent when they
were babies .
DuCasse: It's interesting, the different ways that human beings react
to children. My father was the opposite. He was marvelous with
me when I was a small child. He was patient, he would take me on
walks, and tell me stories, and make up all kinds of wonderful
things for me. When I became a teenager, we were good friends,
but we were always sort of at loggerheads with each other. I had
ideas of my own, and he didn't always approve of them. We had
quite a few tiffs. But when I was a little child, it was just
marvelous.
Oldfield: He came from another culture. But it's also a personal difference
too. Of course, Otis was teased endlessly, because when he first
came back from Paris, he saw Maynard Dixon with two little boys,
and he saw the Mackys with two little boys. He said contemptuously,
"In Paris, the artists don't have children."
Cravath: I remember what Otis said in that context, too, that Henry Ohlhoff
or someone told him that artists always had girls. Otis had
two girls. So that was just fine.
Oldfield: Moya had two girls, so that justified him in looking
down on the artists that had boys. [laughter]
Cravath: And Marty had a girl.
44
DuCasse: And I have two girls. But I have two grandsons, finally.
Oldfield: I have three granddaughters, and two great-granddaughters, and
another great-grandchild on the way which may be a boy. That
will break the string, because it's been nothing but girls for
three generations, although I had two brothers and Otis had a
brother. But it began with me.
DuCasse: Oh, you're going to get that great-grandson.
Oldfield: My daughters both had girls: one had two and one had one.
Cravath: I began to think I'd never have a granddaughter. I think that
Beth would still be trying to have one if Cindy hadn't been a
girl. I have three grandsons — is it three or four?
Oldfield: Three.
Cravath: Wait a minute — Teddy, Robby, Jim, and Stewart.
Oldfield: Oh, I forgot Stewart. Do we need to put anything else on the tape?
DuCasse: I think we still have some left.
Oldfield: Well, we might as well continue talking. Is there anything else
you can ask me?
DuCasse: What I'd like to have you think about for the next time: now
that we've gone through your life and into your life with Otis,
I think it would be great if we could get some of the details
about Otis's background. We won't start that today. But
just kind of think about it: his childhood, and what you remember
of it, and his training, his Paris years, and also we would be
interested in the books that he illustrated — things of that kind.
Cravath: His bookbinding.
45
DuCasse: Yes, and the bookbinding and so forth. And as we draw the details
out in the chronology, you can be thinking about these.
Oldfield: Of course, he was thirty-six when I married him. He'd had a wife
before, you see. All I know about that is what I learned from him.
DuCasse: Yes, of course. But that's what we're interested. He fortunately
was never
[end tape 2, side A; begin tape 2, side B]
[Date of interview: 21 January 1981]
DuCasse: I realized I had not gotten from you — when I listened to them —
you mentioned your attendant in your wedding, but we didn't find
out who the attendant was. Could you give us the name of your
attendant?
Oldfield: Her name was Lucille Duff. She had been my closest friend in my
art school days. Well, we'd been students together all the way
through. What else would you want to know about her? She was a
very beautiful young girl. Her home was San Luis Obispo to go to
art school. She had an aunt living here, and she and her sister
lived with that aunt. It was way out here in the Mission, and
I used to visit their house very often, and occasionally was very
late going home at night. I would get a very severe scolding,
because she didn't approve of young girls going around late at
night alone. I had to cross the bay, because my family lived in
46
Oldfield: Oakland.
Anyway, she was my only attendant.
DuCasse: That's lovely. I'm glad to get her name. Then I don't remember
if you mentioned who stood up with Otis.
Oldfield: Ralph Stackpole. It was in his stoneyard where the ceremony took
place. Did we get the story of the wedding finished?
DuCasse: Yes, we got the story of the wedding finished. One other thing
I realized afterwards: when I asked you about after your marriage
when the children arrived, I said did you still keep on working.
I think what you were thinking of was your painting, and you said
of course you did. What I meant was did you keep up your commercial
artwork.
Oldfield: No.
DuCasse: I just wanted to clarify that one item.
Oldfield: No, that was the end of that.
DuCasse: Okay, now we can go back to where we left off. You had talked about
yourself and Otis, your life together, the two children, and we spoke
a little bit about Otis's attitude toward the children. So we
brought your life together to a point where I think we could then
ask you what you knew of Otis's beginnings. What you were told by
him of where he was born, his family, and so forth.
Oldfield: Of course, I knew his parents rather briefly. His father died
I think during the second year of our marriage, and his mother
survived a few years after that. She was absolutely devastated
by the loss of her husband. She was a very tiny, fragile little
47
Oldfield: person, and really not equal to taking care of herself. So she
wasted away. It was a few years, and then she died.
He was born in Sacramento, July third, 1890. His mother was of
a Southern family. She was born in Mobile, Alabama.
DuCasse: Do you remember what her maiden name was, by any chance?
Oldfield: Yes, it was Lydia Birge. Her family had come to California because
it had been impoverished with the emancipation of the slaves, and
brought bits of the South along. For instance, there was a caged
mockingbird on the mantle of her sister's home, which I also visited.
And a twig of cotton with two cotton balls along side of the
mockingbird cage. I never got to know very many of the other
members of the family, but Otis told me a good deal about them.
His paternal grandmother and grandfather had been British born,
and become Mormon converts in England. According to the story
Otis told me, Grandpa Oldfield was a bit of a scoundrel. He fell
in love with this young Jewish girl, whose parents ran a silk mill
in LincoltShire. . Apparently, she liked him too; he must have
been a charmer. But her parents were very much opposed to the
marriage, so he published the bans in a neighboring town.
Sounds like Shakespeare, doesn't it?
DuCasse: It does indeed!
Oldfield: The marriage took place without the knowledge of her parents
until after it was accomplished fact. Otis's father, who was
the first baby, was born in England. I guess things got a bit
uncomfortable there for the young couple, because they didn't
48
Oldfield: stay in England very long. They brought the baby to this country.
After that, Otis' grandfather, who was apparently a pretty successful
operator of some kind, because he was a Mormon convert, had the
backing of the church, bringing Mormons to Utah to settle in the
promised land. He drove wagon trains back and forth between
Nabu and Utah. He settled his young wife in a corner of the
wilderness there, and two more children were born. I myself
heard Otis' father say that the first language he spoke was that
of the Blackfoot Indians. He grew up with the little Indian children.
A few years went by until the children were — well, the oldest,
who was Otis' father, was about ten, I think. Then Grandpa
Oldfield announced that he was prosperous enough; he was sending
back to England for a second wife. The girl he chose had been his
wife's best friend when they were in England, so she objected.
Cravath: The wife objected.
Oldfield: The wife objected, yes. This was in the day of the Avenging Angels,
you know. She couldn't leave. The church okayed it; it was her
duty as a good Mormon to just journey heavenward by being agreeable
to this arrangement. But she couldn't take it. So she made an
arrangement with somebody who was driving a wagon train across
the desert — to Ogden or somewhere — to meet her out of the
settlement somewhere on part of his route, I guess. Anyway, she
had one baby in her arms, one a toddler, and a little boy eight
or nine or ten years old. Three children. According to the story
I have been told, they pretended that they were playing a game.
49
Oldfield: The little boy was throwing rocks, and then they would go and pick
them up. But instead of coming back they kept on going to the point
of rendevouz. The wagon driver picked them up and took her to the
nearest railroad, which I believe was Ogden at that time. Anyway,
she didn't have a cent; she put herself at the mercy of the conductor
on the train — she was a very beautiful young woman, I know from
the pictures I've seen of her, and also I knew her when she was in
her eighties. A very beautiful old woman she was, and I thought
very superficial: she was loaded with junk jewelry. But she was
elegant — she was erect and white-haired, with pink and white skin —
she was still beautiful at eighty-some.
Anyway, the conductor on the train let her ride with her children
as far as Sacramento. And that's how the family became a Sacramento
family. Otis' father grew up there.
DuCasse: Which was Otis' father? Was he the eight-year-old?
Oldfield: He was the eight-year-old, yes, he was the oldest one. According
to the story that Otis told me, later on, after the second wife
had died, old Grandpa Oldfield turned up like a bad penny in
Sacramento and asked his oldest son to take care of him, which he
did. Otis grew up knowing this grandfather who was never very
much admired by him, according to what he told me.
Otis went to school in Sacramento, and he was the youngest
of three children. He had an older brother and an older sister.
The older brother went off to work on a cattle ranch in Nevada
one summer. This inspired Otis' imagination. He wanted to do
50
Oldfield: it too. He was a little young at the time, of course, but eventually,
he got to the place where he was going to get out somehow or other.
He tried to join the Navy, and they wouldn't have him because he
wasn't tall enough. He became more and more dissatisfied — all
this, you understand, is what he told me — I wasn't around, of course.
Eventually, he said, he threw his books in the gutter and took off.
This was after the Navy had refused him, and quite a few years
had gone by, of course. I don't know how old he was, but he
arrived in Paris when he was nineteen. And this had to be several
years before, because he'd done a lot of other things in the meantime.
DuCasse: That would have been nineteen —
Oldfield: Ninteen-nine when he went to Paris. Before that, he had worked on
this cattle ranch for a while, where he got diphtheria • and passed
it around to all the people, all of the men in the bunkhouse, and
was very unpopular on that account. Then he got a job — I don't know
he got to Montana, except that it's close enough, I guess. I don't
remember any stories of how he got there. But eventually, he was
a fry cook on the — what is it — Missoula, Coeur de Lane —
Cravath: Missoula is in Montana; Coeur de Lane is in Idaho.
Oldfield: Well, there was a railroad that ran between the two places, and
he was a fry cook on that railroad.
Cravath: Northern Pacific.
Oldfield: I guess it was Northern Pacific. By this time he knew that he
wanted to study art. He was scribbling. He'd made up his mind.
Also, his imagination was probably fired by someone he met on
that railroad run who talked to him about an art school in Portland.
51
Oldfield: So he saved his money and he got to Portland. When he got to Portland,
the art school didn't amount to anything. They told him he had to
get to San Francisco. So again he saved his money, and he came down
the coast on one of those little coastwise lumber schooners and got
to San Francisco, where, of course, he didn't have any money; he
had to get a job.
By this time he had learned to take advantage of his short
stature, and he got a job as a bellboy in the old Argonaut Hotel.
It was around Fifth and Market or Fifth and Mission or somewhere
there. There was a resident physician there whom I later met
(Charles Grant)
years later, and there was a very well known painter, a painter
of ships, well-known at this time, whom he met there. The painter
encouraged him in his ambitions to study art, and the physician
took care of him when he fell down the stairs with a heavy tray
once and had to be hospitalized. I can't tell you exactly how long
this bellboy job lasted, but eventually he was hatcheck boy at the
old Cliff House. He was there one New Year's Eve when all the
Spreckels family, and what was her name — the queen from the Hawaiian
islands —
DuCasse: Hakelami?
Oldfield: Yes, something like that. [laughter] Anyway, there was entertainment,
and a lot of booze, and the people at the tables were throwing
five-dollar gold pieces to the entertainers. After the evening was
over, Otis, who was very young, hadn't indulged in the champagne he
could get, and the waiters were nearly all drunk, so that at the end
52
Oldfield: evening, Otis searched among the serpentine and confetti on the floor,
and raked up five hundred dollars in gold coins.
So he took that home to Sacramento, and his father, who by this
time was a master coach painter in the shops of the Southern Pacific
in Sacramento, got him a pass to New York. With his $500, he bought
a ticket — I think it was the Lusitannia — I have a record of that —
but I think it was the Lusitannia, because this was before the war,
and it had to be before she was sunk, you know. He went to France
on the Lusitannia and landed there.
Oh, I left out a little important item. While he was in San Francisco,
while he was working both as a bellhop and hatcheck boy, he had gone
to art school at night at the old Best Academy.
DuCasse: Do you remember where that might have been located?
Oldfield: Yes, it was Franklin and Bush, I think, in one of those old Victorians
that's still there. It was run by a man named Arthur Best, and it
was the art school that he found after he came down from Portland.
DuCasse: Arthur Best rings a bell.
Cravath: Is he the Best that was the father of Virginia Adams? She was a
Best. The family in Yosemite that had an art gallery?
DuCasse: That could be. I'll bet that was. That's where the connection was
coming from.
Oldfield: I'm not sure that he was her father —
Cravath: Well, she was Virginia Best.
DuCasse: I'm sure that was probably the one.
Oldfield: Anyway — there I go again — he went there to school while he was
53
Oldfield: working at night in these other places. Among his fellow students
was a young Frenchman who was going back to France — I don't know
when, but in a short time — so they made an arrangement that he
would meet Otis and show him around when he got there. Otis counted
on this, but when he eventually arrived there, there was no one
to meet him; he spoke not a word of French; he had no passport;
and he was just stranded in a foreign country. And he was young:
he was only nineteen.
DuCasse: And without too much money by that time, I would imagine.
Oldfield: I think it took most of what he had. He told me many tales about
how he lived on french bread with a slice of onion on it. That
was all he had to eat. He shortly acquired a typical art student's
outfit: a cordouroy suit with a norfolk jacket, and baggy trousers
which fastened around the ankles to make them kind of blousy. I
bet Marty wore one of those.
DuCasse: He certainly did.
Oldfield: He said that he lived and slept in that thing, because he had no
bedding; he had no bed. Eventually, a couple of the other students
that he met at the academy — he must have had a little money to
enroll, because he enrolled in Academy Julien. He met other
students there, of course, and eventually some of them invited
him to share their digs. But all they had was just a bare floor.
So he slept in that cordouroy outfit on the bare floor. He also
had a cape, and the cape was warm and helpful too, I'm sure.
Quatre
He used to like to tell about the first Art Ball he attended.
54
Oldfield: He wore the cape to the door and took it off. That's a typical —
I don't remember all of the art student stories he told. He had
a whole hoard of them, and about the shenanigans in the street
the next day. They didn't want to quit, and they just kept on
going. People kept on calling the police, and they kept on being
hauled in, and then they'd get out and go to it again.
And there was always someone among those art students who had
influential relatives, you know. So they got them all out, time
after time. But instead of behaving, they went back to doing it
again.
Now, let me see — where do we go from here? I've got him as far
as going. He arrived there, and registered at the academy, made
a few friends, and moved in with them.
DuCasse: How long did he stay there, do you remember?
Oldfield: How long did he stay altogether? He came back in f24, and he left
in 1909 . That was twenty five years .
Cravath: He was in Paris twenty-five years?
Oldfield: No, fifteen years. Of course, he came to make French friends.
In fact, one of the French boys who was one of his first friends
took him home with him for the first Christmas holidays. There
he felt at home, was very, very happy, and promptly fell in love
with the boy's sister, who rejected him very brutally because he
was — they called him a savage, the American savage.
DuCasse: Yes, that's what they called my father, the savage.
Oldfield: Savage, yes. He claimed that his reputation was enhanced by his
55
Oldfield: claim of being a Californian. They didn't think that Calif ornians
were quite as savage as the general run of Americans.
DuCasse: I think the aura of the gold age still clung to California.
Oldfield: Yes, and California had been a Spanish province at one time. I
Icn ow
don't why they called Marty a savage; he was not really that kind
of an American.
DuCasse: Perhaps he behaved a little bit like one. [laughter]
Oldfield: Maybe he did. All I know about this part of Otis' life is what
he told me. The story was that after he was rejected by the
sister of the friend who had taken him home, their mother was very,
very concerned about him, and very sympathetic, and showed him a
lot of compassion and interest, and eventually she became his
common-law wife. He lived with her until she died, and then he
came back to California.
DuCasse: How did he support himself all this time? Did he do any work, or
did she take care of him?
Oldfield: She had a millinery shop, and she was quite prosperous, apparently.
They made hats in those days, and they made babies' bonnets. It
was a good business. She ran quite a large shop and employed quite
a number of girls. Also, his family sent him a little money during
those years. He said, rather unkindly, I thought, that it was
"cigarette money." He felt that it was such a small amount that
it didn't contribute very much to his — but he was provided with a
studio, a place to live, and food, and what he needed. But he
didn't need very much money.
56
Oldfield: Anyway, during the war his brother was an American GI — did they
call it GI in those World War I —
DuCasse: Probably not, but I don't know what they called them.
Cravath: Federal board students when they went to art school.
DuCasse: Of course, in the second world war they called them GIs . I don't
remember what they called them after World War I.
Oldfield: This was when they came back. Well, this was in Paris.
DuCasse: It would be interesting to know what the title for them was.
Oldfield: Doughboy was what they called them. So my brother-in-law was a
doughboy. So he was in Paris as an American soldier, and visited
Otis and got acquainted with his way of life, and brought the tale
back to his parents, which they found pretty disturbing. Anyway,
it didn't bother him very much, I guess.
Anyway, he came back when she died. Surveying the field, for
some reason or other, he chose me. I have no real knowledge why,
except that I know that he had lived with a woman who was old enough
to be his mother for quite a long period. I think he wanted a young
girl. But why he chose me instead of one of those French girls
that Lucien Labaudt was trying to push on him, I don't know.
DuCasse: I think he'd had enough of the French., perhaps.
Oldfield: Maybe he'd had enough of the French.
Cravath: Well, he certainly chose wisely!
DuCasse: He had learned a great deal, and he knew who to choose. That's
the reason.
Oldfield: Well, that's very nice of you. Anyway, he did. Didn't I tell you
57
Oldfield: a little bit on the last tape about his courtship? Pursuing me
with little French songs, and all that stuff.
DuCasse: Yes, and the lovely picnics that you took.
Oldfield: And appearing at my parent's door in his French get-up with a
bouquet of roses behind his back, held behind him, and all of
my parent's neighbors peeking out of the window to see what in
the world I had picked up. He was really conspicuous.
I remember when we went to buy wedding rings [brief tape
interruption] and we went to one of the jewelry stores, and he
ordered the ring. Then the clerk who was taking the order asked
him his name and his address. He said, "Oh, you don't need that.
Just take one look at me: you'll never forget me." [laughter]
I was so embarrassed. He was so cocky about it, and he wouldn't
give him his name.
Cravath: Was that your wedding ring or engagement ring?
Oldfield: The wedding ring. We had to leave it to be engraved and everything,
so the man needed his name and his address and a little bit of
identification. "You don't need that. Just take one look at me."
I remember another time I was embarrassed. We went to the
First Parillia. Do you remember it at all? The one at the art
school?
Cravath: Oh, do I remember that. I certainly do.
Oldfield: I had made him an elaborate costume — he embarrassed me so many times;
I'm just beginning to remember them. [laughter] I had sewn raveled
hemp on a pair of long underdrawers . He went as Pan. He had two
58
Oldfield: little red wooden horns, and he shaved the hair
[end tape 2, side B; begin tape 3, side A]
Oldfield: I was on the First Parillia, wasn't I?
DuCasse: Right. And you were just finishing his costume.
Oldfield: Yes, I made his costume, and of course he got first prize for the
costume. I was pregnant; I really didn't even want to go, but he
insisted. So I got up something for myself, some cover-up type
of costume.
DuCasse: A Roman matron costume.
Oldfield: Right, something like that. Anyway, we went to the door, and there
were some students there, of course, collecting the tickets or the
admittance fees. Otis refused; he didn't have a ticket or tickets,
and he refused to pay to get in. He said, "You're lucky I've come."
[laughter] "You ought to pay me!"
Cravath: Was this after he won the prize?
Oldfield: No, this was before he won the prize. They didn't know what to do
with this little guy, so they let him in. I sort of crept in after
him. I was so embarrassed. I'd never been with anyone before
who was like that. I was absolutely embarrassed. We got in, and
right inside was Edgar Walter, who immediately went into ecstasy
over Otis' make-up and his costume. He said, "Take<Sme back to Paris."
59
Oldfield: And he took him in charge, and then they couldn't do anything about
him. I guess Edgar was probably on the committee that awarded the
prize. I remember tTreska was Cleopatra, and she was
sure she'd get the prize, and she didn't. They gave it to Otis.
DuCasse: Well, it was more original.
Oldfield: My next embarrassment was the priz^e'nJSs1 a hundred-dollar merchandise
order on the Emporium. So my next embarrassment came when we went
to spend the money, and we bought a double bed. Otis, in a very
expansive mood, said to the clerk, "The first thing I think that
married people should have is a bed, don't you?"
The clerk looked at me; I was obviously pregnant. He was thinking,
"Well, you didn't need it, I guess, anyway." [laughter] Anyway,
that was my second embarrassment, connected with the Parillia.
Now, let's find our continuity again.
DuCasse: I know what I wanted to ask you: why did Otis particularly come to
San Francisco. Was that because he had studied there before he went
to Paris?
Oldfield: No, he tried to go back to Sacramento. His parents were there,
and he told me, "I couldn't believe it. They had grown old!"
He didn't recognize his parents. It was quite a stretch: it
was fifteen years. But his parents weren't old when I knew them,
not really old. Anyway, he was singularly lacking in imagination
in certain areas. He just had not prepared himself for the
changes that he would find there.
Anyway, he tried to adjust himself to it. He came down to
60
Oldfield: San Francisco to visit, and renewed his acquaintance with Ralph
Stackpole and met through him a few other people.
Cravath: Did he meet Ralph in Paris?
Oldfield: In Paris. Ralph was over there during his divorce. Otis said
that he found in the catalogue of one of the French exhibitions
the name Adele Stackpole, because he was looking for Americans.
He found Adele Stackpole, Sacramento, California. So he looked
her up and became acquainted with her. Then when Ralph came along,
Ralph looked him up, because it had something to do with — the
sculptor who did the lion — Putnam. Arthur Putnam had been Ralph's
teacher.
DuCasse: He went to Paris in 1911, I think it was, or sometime after that.
Oldfield: Otis had gotten in contact with Arthur Putnam because he was an
American and he was having problems with Spreckels. Spreckels
was having his sculpture reproduced with a view to bestowing it
on the city of San Francisco. Putnam was having problems with her
about paying the founder and stuff like that. So he was feeling a
little bit irate at the time, and Otis, because of his identity
as a Calif ornian, somehow or other got mixed up in it —
Cravath: This all took place in Paris?
Oldfield: This all took place in Paris. So when Ralph arrived there, he got
to Otis' name from Arthur Putnam, and looked him up and visited
him in his studio. Otis told me that he, when he met Ralph, said
"I've just met another Stackpole from California." This was putting
his foot in his mouth, because this was the woman who was divorcing
61
Oldfield: him, and he'd followed her to Paris. So this was how that friendship
began, and Otis renewed it when he came back to Sacramento and came
down to visit San Francisco. He renewed the relationship with
Ralph then .
DuCasse: Did he also with Adele?
Oldfield: No, I don't think so. I don't think he ever saw Adele again, not
that I knew about. By this time, by the time he came to San Francisco
to live, Adele and Ralph were divorced, and he was already with
Jeanette. So it was old, and they were not seeing each other.
Also, she had moved to Oakland, and Peter grew up there.
Anyway — there I go again with the anyways —
DuCasse: There are very few of them really. [laughter]
Odlfield: Through Ralph he met Piazzoni, Maynard Dixon, and the various
other people who were conspicuous on the scene at that time.
DuCasse: And most of them who also had been in Paris.
Oldfield: Yes, practically all of them. Did I tell you the story about
the first time I saw him at the art school when he made the speech?
DuCasse: Oh, yes indeed you did.
Oldfield: Well, this occurred on one of those visits to San Francisco. Then
he used to come and visit the acquaintances that he had who were
night students at the art school. On one of those occasions he
told me about his upcoming show at the old Beaux Arts gallery.
Cravath: I remember that so well.
Oldfield: I don't know how much of that story I told you, but that was my
next meeting with him after the lecture.
62
DuCasse: I don't think you told too much about that. I think we might go
into that .
Oldfield: Did I tell you about his having been asked at the end of that
lecture: "Do you mean to say that you don't have to paint with a
brush?"
And he said, "You can put it on with an old shoe if you feel
like it!"
DuCasse: Yes, you did.
Oldfield: It was after that that I went to see his show and met him sitting
in the foyer. That was our meeting. Then I must have told you
that. I know I went on then to being in his class and — well, let's
skip that. That overlaps.
DuCasse: That's all right, so we don't lose anything that we should keep
in the story. Was he teaching at the Art Institute after you were
married?
Cravath: The California School of Fine Arts?
DuCasse: He was teaching there, was he not?
Oldfield: Yes. He was teaching there before we were married. What happened
was that he conducted this little private class I told you about
all the time sort of being the bohemian-about-town, you know, and
seeing the other artists who were working a great deal. This
happened to be just at the time that the present building was in
course of its construction.
DuCasse: Yes, after they moved from Nob Hill.
Oldfield: They sold the property at Nob Hill, but it took some time to build
63
Oldfield: the new building.
Meanwhile they set up the school in temporary headquarters down
on Market Street, Market and California. The regular staff, of
whom Otis was not one at that time, didn't want to conduct the
summer school. So they offered Otis the opportunity to have the
California School of Fine Arts' summer session under his management
and control, and to keep for himself whatever he could make. So
he had a friend who had a studio in the backyard that he had built
for his wife many years before, because she had been an art
student when they married — he was a medic, and he just wanted to
indulge his wife. So he built her a studio in the back yard of their
home. I don't remember where it was, although I was there once.
It seems to me it was out Jackson Street somewhere. Anyway, it
was a fairly good-sized room, and Otis conducted the California
School of Fine Arts summer session there. I don't think he had to
pay any rent even, because it wasn't being used. They just lent
it to him.
Apparently the administration of the art school was pleased
with what he had done. So at the end of the summer he was offered
a job teaching regular session. That was how he began.
DuCasse: Did he teach painting only?
Oldfield: He taught painting. I don't think he ever taught drawing. He
began with still life, and I believe his first classes were
night classes. Then he had Saturday classes.
Cravath: And you were in that night class, weren't you Helen?
64
Oldfield: No. After we were married, I used to go with him.
Cravath: I thought maybe you were in his class.
Oldfield: No. The only class of his that I was in was the one in Carol
Wirtenberger 's studio. That was long over by the time we were
married. Of course, all the newspapers said that I had married
my teacher, but I really didn't even think of it that way. This
was a very informal little group gathered in a fellow student's
studio. I remember he used to pass his beret around, and we would
each put a dollar in it or something. He was very hard up at that
time. He told me, although I don't remember it, that Maynard Dixon
used to give him jobs working on mural commissions that he had.
He worked for Maynard under Maynard 's direction. He did that, and
then he had this little class where he got a dollar a head from
his students, which didn't provide very much. But, you know, a
room in the Monkey Block at that time cost ten dollars.
DuCasse: Good heavens! You didn't have to have too much to subsist.
Oldfield: You didn't have to have too much. And also, he set himself up
as a bookbinder.
DuCasse: Where did he learn bookbinding, do you remember?
Oldfield: In Paris. This was on the advice of his French wife. She felt
that every artist should have a craft to fall back on, a practical
craft. So she encouraged him, and arranged for him to have very
good training, I believe, because he was a good bookbinder. But
he was not a naturally good craftsman. He bungled things, and I
learned all the French swearwords in the book when he was doing
65
Oldfield:- bookbinding.
DuCasse: And that's a very precise kind of art. It really is a craft.
Oldfield: Yes, and it requires control. This was something that he had no
patience with. He used to look at me and say, "How can you be so
patient? It's indecent."
DuCasse: Oh, patience is a great virtue, there's no doubt about it.
Oldfield: He felt that he didn't have it, and I did, and he taunted me with it.
DuCasse: Incidentally, before we go too much further, I don't think we ever
got the name of his French wife. Do you remember what her name was?
Oldfield: Yes. Her name was Roche. She was Madame Roche. Her son was
Marcel Roche.
DuCasse: Do you remember what her first name might have been?
Oldfield: Yes:Jeheeme He called her "Jane." That's one reason for our daughter's
being named Jane.
DuCasse: Well, think of that! So he helped to support himself with his
bookbinding, even though he had some problems with it! [laughs]
Oldfield: He had problems with it which I remember. He was very, very proud
of his skill and his knowledge of the craft as a French craft. He
was a French trained bookbinder, which had a certain distinction here.
He did some very beautiful things. He went through a period when he
was doing bindings of erotica for Hollywood personalities. This
was when we were still living on Telegraph Hill. They would send
him the books , the unbound books , and he would try to make some kind
of exotic bindings which would go with what he knew was the content,
although he never bothered to read it. Then he would mail them back.
I remember one of the men was Von Stcoheim that he made bindings
66
Oldfield: for.
DuCasse: Oh, Erich Von Stroheim, the director and actor.
Oldfield: And actor. He had a collection of erotica. Otis bound them usually
in velum. But then he got the idea that it would be so much more
exciting to have some human skin in those bindings.
Cravath: Oh, that I'll never forget!
Oldfield: So he had a student at the art school who was also a medical
student at UC Berkeley, and he got him some — it was a paper shopping
bag full of skin off of a cadaver.
Cravath: Sounds like Leonardo when he was doing his nefarious things —
Oldfield: It wasn't as successful for Otis. Anyway, I remember going out
with him and sitting in the car while he went in and came out with
this dripping shopping bag.
Cravath: This was after you were married?
Oldfield: Yes, oh, yes. Quite a long time after we were married. He brought
that out, and we took it up to our little Telegraph Hill flat, and
he was sure that he could cure that skin. The only experience that
he had had with working with human skin was in Paris . One of his
closest friends, and I think really his longest friend from his
Paris days was a poet named Noel Bureau. Noel had had a sweetheart
or a mistress or something, with whom he broke up, and she subsequently
drowned herself in the Seine. He was also a medical student, and
her body came up on the dissecting table, and he recognized her.
So he took, secretly, a little piece of skin from between her
breasts, and he harbored it and treasured it for years until he
67
Oldfield: got himself with another woman. He gave, the piece of skin to Otis.
And Otis used it to bind a book. It's only a little piece; it's
just the backing of the book.
I have seen that book many times. In fact, it's around here
somewhere, except I can't put my finger on it. I don't know exactly
where.
Anyway, this is what gave him the idea of binding these erotic
books in human skin. He was sure he'd be able to do it because he'd
handled human skin before. He didn't know, I'm sure, how much work
had been done on that piece that he had before he got it. But he
thought he knew how. Also, he gave instructions to the man who
arranged for him to get it, that it should be the skin from the
inside of the thigh, because this would be the easiest to handle
and the finest textured of any skin on the human body.
When we got it up to Telegraph Hill, it turned out to be the
whole abdomen, with all the fat and the tendons and the thickenings
stuck to it. I remember trying to help him. He put that skin over
stovepipes, and we tried to scrape the fat off of it. We put it in
formaldehyde. We tried to scrape the fat off of it. We tried to
scrape the thickened parts away. Finally, it got to stink, and I
refused to work on it anymore. Eventually, he put it in the garbage
can. [laughter] I don't know why we weren't arrested for murder!
DuCasse: Well, they didn't inspect your garbage.
Oldfield: The garbage man came, and he got rid of it.
Cravath: Oh, Helen, I never heard that story!
68
Oldfield: He never did bind a book with human skin.
Cravath: Oh, he didn't? I thought he had because I heard —
Oldfield: It was just that one little one, this little back. I am quite sure
that Bureau had cured that skin before he gave it to Otis, because
he kept it for a long time.
DuCasse: There must have been a secret to it.
Oldfield: Well, if I could believe what he told me, he knew all about it.
He had learned. And maybe he did participate, but he certainly
didn't know how. And, of course, he got the skin from the wrong
part of the bodies, besides, which made it more difficult. But
anyway, that was the reason that he had it, because he had in mind
these erotic books that he was being sent by a friend in Los Angeles
who had a little bookstore. A little bookstore, I afterwards learned,
that had a very dubious reputation. It was called The Satyr, and
it was a perfect title. The man who ran it bootlegged the printing
of Chick Sayles ' The Outhouse.
DuCasse: Oh, yes. And to think that that was ever considered pornographic!
[laughter] That innocent little book.
Oldfield: Hardly pornographic. Anyway, oh, it was a big seller, you know, when
it came out. He printed it privately, without any authorization,
and he got caught, and they sent him to jail. That was just one
of his little tricks.
I remember he used to come up to see us on Telegraph Hill and
bring jewelry for out little girls. He was a quite a lavish type
of guy. He liked to make a show of such things. And I know both of
69
Oldfield: our kids thought he was great. His name was Stanley Rose. I don't
know what happened to him. He eventually did get out of jail. I
don't know whether he went back into the book business or not.
[laughter] But he was the one who made these contacts with these
movie personalities and sent Otis the orders.
Otis would bind these books and send them back to Stanley, and
Stanley might have added to the price, I don't know. He was totally
unscrupulous about things like that.
DuCasse: Did Otis ever get paid for his work?
Oldfield: Yes, he got paid what he asked. But he didn't ask very much considering
what he was doing. He was sending this pornographic literature with
pornographic bindings in the mail. He might have gotten caught, too.
DuCasse: It shows how many things get by, just through —
Oldfield: He was just sending them parcel post. They came that way, and
he sent them back that way.
And he always had very strange ideas about the value of money.
It was never realistic. He never really changed from francs to
dollars. And every dollar was so much to him that he always under-
priced his work. Now, when I have an opportunity to sell something,
I multiply his prices by five.
DuCasse: Of course you would have to, naturally. And then you would have to
multiply them because everything has gone up so much.
Oldfield: Everything has gone up so, and his were so modest. But you can't
believe how unrealistic people are about the value of artworks,
that often prices them too high, even that. Something that he would
70
Oldfield: ask fifteen or twenty dollars for is now a hundred dollars.
People often think that that's too much. It was such a little thing,
you know, such a little thing.
DuCasse: I think many of them did that. I know my father never charged the
proper amounts for his paintings. I think there was only one painting
that he ever really got the right amount.
Cravath: I never have charged the proper amount.
DuCasse: I think most artists, when they price things themselves, don't do
themselves justice. This has to be done by an agent or by a gallery.
Oldfield: But at the time the paintings that he priced at two to four hundred
dollars were considered overpriced by some people. I remember
Whedie said that. She said that artists would be able to sell
more if they didn't overprice their paintings. She was running a
gallery at the time.
DuCasse: When you speak of pricing and so forth, did he exhibit a great
deal? Did he have one-man shows?
Oldfield: Oh, yes. He had one-man shows every year for — we used to go on
safaris during the summer. I think I told you the story of finding
one of my paintings and asking him who did it. He did this every
summer for, I guess, about the first ten years that we were married,
and had a show at the Beaux Arts gallery as long as it was there.
Cravath: Sometimes he had a show at The Modern Gallery, didn't he, on
Montgomery Street.
Oldfield: Yes, I think he did. But that was after it moved upstairs,
and Whedie was running it. But not when it was in the original
71
Oldfield: location.
He, of course, sent to juried shows all over the country.
And after we moved to Telegraph Hill, he became interested in the
activity on the waterfront, and the activity of the hill: the kids
and the inhabitants of the hill: the bohemians , the kids, and the
X"
others. At that time, Montgomery Street wasn't paved: they were
two levels, but they were dirt. And Julius' Castle was there,
and just beyond where we lived.
DuCasse: You were on the east side, weren't you?
Oldfield: No, we were on the west side, but it was way up. We overlooked
the east side totally, you see. We overlooked all the hill that
went down towards Sansome Street.
Cravath: Is that building still there, the one where you lived?
Oldfield: Yes.
DuCasse: That must have been quite close to Coit Tower, then.
Oldfield: Yes, the tower is above it.
Cravath: We ought to go up and take a walk up there.
Oldfield: Yes.
Cravath: The building where we had a studio on Filbert Street, too.
Oldfield: Yes, that was Russian Hill.
Cravath: No, it was Filbert Street, right up near the school.
Oldfield: Oh, yes.
DuCasse: There's one little fact that I wanted to correct, something that
I said when we were discussing the California College of Arts
and Crafts and Marty and the Meyers and so forth. I had erroneously
72
DuCasse: said that I went there in 1926. I went there in 1928. I was
anticipating a little bit.
Oldfield: I was wondering, because that was very shortly after I left.
I was there until 1925. I don't remember whether I was a student
there during '26 at all. I may have been, because I wasn't married
until — yes, I was there as a student very close to the time when
I was married, because
[end tape 3, side A; begin tape 3, side B]
DuCasse: When we were talking about the bookbinding, I was reminded of
the books that he illustrated, the two books that he did (at
least we know of two books). One was McTeague, by Frank Norris,
and the other was his journals, his Alaskan journals. I believe
that McTeague came first, didn't it?
Oldfield: McTeague was really just illustrations, althoug his illustrations
were just chapter headings, line drawings of chapter headings.
You know what McTeague is. It's the story of a dentist in San
Francisco in the early days who was ill-prepared for what he was
doing, but hung out a shingle anyway. It's just full of San Francisco
atmosphere. Otis' drawings were just drawings that were recognizably
San Francisco silhouettes, you know.
DuCasse: Do you remember who the publisher was, by any chance?
73
Oldfield: Yes, it was Jane Grabhorn, and Bill Roth. They called themselves
the Colt Press.
DuCasse: Do you remember about what year that might have been?
Oldfield: It was in the early years of the war, early forties, maybe. After
Pearl Harbor, but not too long after, but not too long after,
because I remember —
DuCasse: Forty-two or '43, probably.
Oldfield: Yes, maybe. It was during the time when we were still frightened
of being invaded, and we had blackouts. We were at a cocktail party
which had something to do with the publication of this book. I
think it was the publication of it.
DuCasse: Maybe it was an autographing party.
Oldfield: Yes, it was a cocktail party, and it was on the top floor of one
of the downtown buildings. As I remember, it was Geary Street
somewhere. I don't remember which building it was.
Anyway, we were at this cocktail party when the sirens went off.
And all the lights went out. We had left our two children, who were
at that time maybe twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old, studying
while we went to the cocktail party. We thought they were old enough
to stay, and so did they, without babysitters. So we had chanced
it, and this siren went off.
So we thought immediately of them. We were frightened — especially
I was frightened. We got out into the street, because all the
lights went off on the top of that building, and we had to walk
down the stairs. We got out in the street; there were no street
74
Oldfield: cars running, there were no lights. I remember walking up Stockton
Stockton Street through the tunnel to Chinatown, and then up Union
Street to where we lived with my heart in my mouth. I was so afraid
that they had been terribly frightened. They studied like all kids
did, with the radio on. Of course, that went off. And the lights
went out. We got there, and they were just as cool as they could
be. They had found candles, and they thought that it was a failure
of the PG&E. They were not disturbed at all. They were just going
on with their studies. I thought it was great too. But such an
unnecessary panic on my part !
DuCasse: And at such a time, too, when you were really supposed to enjoy
that evening.
Oldfield: It was a cocktail party, and I imagine it was pretty much over
by the time this happened, because it was totally dark when we got
out on the street.
DuCasse: Did they approach Otis — Grabhorn and Roth?
Oldfield: Yes, Jane Grabhorn did. Jane was Robert's wife, you know. Otis knew
the Grabhorn brothers very, very well from the beginning. He did
binding for them. He bound their edition of Leaves of Grass . He
had done a number of other things for them.
DuCasse: Did he do other illustrations for them? Do you remember?
Oldfield: No, he never did any illustrations for them. Mallett Dean was
doing all of their illustration. It wasn't until the Grabhorns
separated, and Jane started up this Colt Press with Bill Roth that
he was asked to do any illustrations. So he did those. He did
75
Oldfield: a drawing for each chapter heading, and also Colt Press Logo was a
pony. Afterwards, they published an edition of Kipling, which
had to do with his visit to San Francisco, and that poem about
"East is east, and West is west. . ." and all that stuff. I don't
know whether I can find it or not, but I think it's up there on
that top shelf. She sent Otis an autographed copy, saying that
she had never found anything better for San Francisco, and that
she used some of the same drawings as headings in that book.
DuCasse: So he didn't do anything especially for that.
Oldfield: It was just what she had left from the — a very interesting thing
happened to me years later when I was teaching at the Hamlin School.
Part of my job was helping one of the seniors who was on the staff
of the school yearbook to make her drawings, which were to be
headings like that. The yearbook at that time was printed by the
Grabhorn Press. When the students took their drawings for that
yearbook, Ed Grabhorn saw them, and he thought Otis had done them,
[laughter]
DuCasse: Isn't that something?
Oldfield: Imagine — through me! Otis never even knew what the book was,
never saw it. Somehow or other, not consciously, I maneuvered
this child into making line drawings that were so much like Otis'
that Ed Grabhorn was fooled.
Cravath: She must have been pretty gifted then.
Oldfield: Well, I don't know. I don't know whether she was gifted or I was!
76
Oldfield: I didn't do the drawings, no. I didn't do the drawings. And
she didn't know Otis or anything about him, and that's really in
that book.
But I am conscious that I knew that those line drawings were
very simple and effective. She had been directed to make line
drawings — no, she had been directed to make drawings for the
headings of the various sections which had to do with various
areas in San Francisco.
I remember once we went out to the Legion of Honor, and that's
one of the things that he had in there. And one was the Coit Tower —
you know, all various parts that are easily recognized symbols
of areas.
So without having her see the drawings that he had made or
know anything about them, I guided her into doing these drawings
that fooled Ed Grabhorn.
DuCasse: I think that's extraordinary.
Oldfield: It was really ridiculous. It was a little irritating to me at the
time, because I was having too much trouble to escape this dominance
anyway .
DuCasse: Yes, I can understand how that wouldn't be the happiest thing for you.
Oldfield: I didn't want to do it. I did it unconsciously.
DuCasse: Now we hear that Otis took this trip to Alaska. Did you go with him
on that trip?
Oldfield: No.
DuCasse: Roughly when would that have been, do you think?
77
Oldfield: That was in 1931. He, by this time, had had two or three shows
in New York, the first one exceedingly successful. It was of
drawings .
DuCasse: Do you remember what gallery it was?
Oldfield: Yes, Montross. It had been arranged by Walt Kuhn, who visited
us here when he was in San Francisco. I guess it was '28. The
first show was in '29. Walt had seen the drawings that Otis was
accumulating of the happenings of the hill: the activities of the
kids, and the herd of goats that went past our window every day,
and the goat woman who carried a bundle of green grass on her head
nad herded the goats back to their stable, which was in —
Cravath: Can you think that San Francisco had that sort of thing?
DuCasse: Isn't it wonderful to think of?
Oldfield: It was in Castle Street. Do you know where Castle Street is? A
little alley off of Union Street, right across from where Rudolph
Schaeffer's school was at one time. There was a stable; they had
a stable in there. Every day, when there was anything for them to
eat, they herded those goats up to Montgomery Street, and down
there to where the green grass grew.
It was often very, very muddy at that time. I remember standing
there at the top of Union Street, and seeing those goats being brought
home, and skidding because Union Street was paved. They would put
on all four brakes, and they'd skid down to Castle Street, they
were so muddy. So Otis drew all these activities,
Cravath: I can't remember that.
78
Oldfield: Well, you didn't live there, dear.
Cravath: No, but even so, I would have thought I would have been aware of
what was going on.
Oldfield: Anyway, these drawings were sent to New York. The next year, Otis
went back there. He was very disappointed, because the show had
been a sell-out, but the gallery hadn't collected. They had delivered
the drawings, but hadn't collected. So Otis got the addresses, and
went around and knocked on people's doors and asked for him money.
Anyway, he came back after that. The next year, '29, he had the
opportunity to make a trip up from Sacramento — I think it was to
Red Bluff, or maybe Colusa — on an old stern wheel paddle schooner
named the Dover . He brought back a collection of drawings — or he
made them after he got back — he brought back the notes — from that
trip, which he again sent to New York. It was shown in the downtown
gallery. I can't remember her name, but the woman who ran that
gallery really took advantage of the fact that he wasn't there.
She had them framed, and she shipped them back with all the glass
on the frame in such a big crate, such a heavy crate, that when it
arrived at our studio on Telegraph Hill, we didn't have the money
to pay the shipping charges. Not only that, they weren't all there.
There was about half of them.
So this turned Otis off on New York from then on. He never
had another show in New York, He didn't want anything to do with
those New York galleries .
DuCasse: I can't blame him if they treated him that way.
79
Oldfield: Well, the first time, he had to collect himself. The next time,
he didn't get his drawings back. And also, he was out the money
that he had to find to pay the shipping charges. They came back
by railway express in a huge big case. And it was all glass,
because the frames had glass! Anyway, that was one of the un
pleasant experiences that turned him off on being a New York artist.
Another thing was that when he was there during the time of
his second show — he went in '29, I remember, and he was only gone
a couple of weeks, and he was gone at Christmas time. So he went
during his Christmas vacation from the art school. They told him
while he was there that he had the opportunity to become a well-
known and conspicuous New York artist, but he would have to come
back there and live without his family. But that time, he had
two children.
So he came home and said, "I've decided to be a provincial artist."
[laughter]
DuCasse: Yes, Marty was pretty much the same way. He didn't want to go to
New York either. Macbeth wanted to represent and have his work,
and he just wasn't interested in having to move himself across
the country. I can understand that.
Oldfield: Helper was her name, the woman who ran the downtown gallery.
She had a gallery with that name on it, too, at one time,
but I've forgotten the continuity of it.
Anyway, he came back. After he made the trip on the Dover, he
had a show of the drawings that he made from that trip here before
he went. I don't remember where it was, whether it was in the
80
Oldfield: Beaux Arts gallery or at the art school. Anyway, he had a show,
and it attracted quite a few buyers here. One of them was a man
named [pause] — I can't remember right now.
DuCasse: Maybe it'll come to you as you go on.
Oldfield: Anyway, he was the president of the Stock Exchange Club, and vice-
president of a company called the Union Fish Company, which ran
boats to the Bering Sea to fish for cod every year. So he had
bought — Bertram Allenson was his name — he had bought several of the
drawings that Otis had made from his upriver trip. So he arranged
for one of the Union Fish Company ships to give passage to Otis
the following year. Otis was invited by the company. I wasn't
invited. There were no women on the boat. They considered it bad
luck to have a female aboard even. So there was no question of
my going.
So Otis took time off from his teaching job in the spring of
1931, and he made this trip. There again, before he left, I met
the captain and the mate, and I had them to dinner up at our little
flat on Telegraph Hill. Otis reported when he came home that every
time anything interesting happened on deck, they would rout him
out and the captain would remind him that he had promised his
wife he'd produce five hundred drawings on that ship. I don't
remember making that request at all! But he was largely responsible
for some of the things that Otis got. When they had all hands on
deck to reef all the sails in a storm, they got him up on deck
and they lashed him to mast, and made him draw.
DuCasse: Good for them! He didn't miss a trick, did he?
81
Oldfield: This was very rewarding for him. That was the source of the book
that you mentioned, the other book. That was printed by Grabhorn
Hoyemu, which was Jane Grabhorn 's husband and Andrew Hoyemt;. That
wasn't Grabhorn Press, really at all, although Bob Grabhorn was
still around at that time.
DuCasse: Were those illustrations pen and ink, or —
Oldfield: They were charcoal drawings, defined by pen and ink, and tinted
with water color. What is left of them is framed on the wall in
other room, if you'd like to see it. There are about twenty-five,
or twenty-eight maybe, left, because a lot of them were sold.
They were shown in San Francisco first, and then they traveled all
around the country.
DuCasse: Did they ever travel up to Alaska?
Oldfield: No. They aren't really concerned with Alaska, because they're all
on the ship. The only time they were anywhere near Alaska was in
Dutch Harbor, and Otis left the ship there, and didn't know how he
was going to get back. He hadn't made any arrangements to come
home. He just went on this ship without knowing how he was going
to get home.
I was staying with my parents on the farm at Santa Rosa with
my two little kids. I remember I was very worried at one time.
I remember being in the kitchen with my mother,, and the farm
kitchen had an old, woodburning cooks tove. I remember I was
feeding wood into it — we were cooking something. She was upset
about something that was going on there, I don't remember what
82
Oldfield: it was at this time. I remember saying to her, "What are you
kicking about? For all I know, I may be a widow!" [laughter]
DuCasse: You were really feeling sorry for yourself! Did you get any
communications from him along the trip? Did he ever have a
chance to — ?
Oldfield: No.
DuCasse: Probably they didn't stop at any ports or anything until they
got to their destination.
Oldfield: I was on the farm, you see. I wasn't at home. He couldn't get
me by telephone. The first thing I got was a telegram that he
sent from Seattle — no, he sent the telegram, I guess, from Dutch
Harbor. I got a telegram, and I remember coming down to San
Francisco and calling Bill Gerstle and telling him that I was
worried because I'd had this telegram, and I didn't know where
Otis was or how he was going to get home. He said, "No news is
good news; don't worry. We don't have any news. We don't know
where the Louise is, but we expect that she's up there in the
Bering Sea, fishing for cod." And he didn't want to stay there
for fishing, you know. After he saw the trip, he didn't want to
stay there anymore.
So he got off at Dutch Harbor. It happened that a Bureau of
Fisheries tug was coming home from the Pribilof Islands — that's
what the name is, isn't it? Isn't that right? Pribilof Islands —
they're somewhere up in the Bering Sea — bringing an American
schoolteacher home at the end of a stint. So the company — I don't
know whether it was the Alaska Commercial Company or the Union
83
Oldfield: Fish Company — they arranged passage for him on this Bureau of
Fisheries tug.
DuCasse: That must have been a rough trip.
Oldfield: Yes, it was very rough. He was seasick all the way, he said. It
was a small boat. They got down to — it wasn't Anchorage, it was
one of those other Alaska towns —
DuCasse: Juneau?
Oldfield: It might have been Juneau, but it was a port. Anyway, the captain
of the tug died on the trip between Dutch Harbor and the Alaskan
port. They had no way of taking care of him, so they put his body
on the top of the cabin — it was freezing cold, you know — and
they froze him and carried him to — Juneau 's not a port, is it?
DuCasse: Maybe it's not.
Oldfield: I can easily check it. [brief tape interruption]
DuCasse: Seward?
Oldfield: Seward. When they got to Seward, they held the funeral for this
captain. Otis was so impressed by the fact that all of these
Eskimo women had silk stockings and fur coats. They were so
dressed up and it was so fancy, that he was inspired to buy me a
pelt. He brought home this big fox pelt which I never really
enjoyed wearing, because I don't like to wear animal skins.
DuCasse: I'm not a fur person either.
Oldfield: Now, I've lost track again. He got to Seward. This, I believe,
was where he sent the telegram. So I got that, and I didn't
hear anything more from him for such a long time, and I began to
84
Oldfield: get worried. I figured — I think he had probably said that he was on
his way home. That was when I worried that I might be a widow. I
got back to San Francisco, and called Bill Gerstle. He said not
to worry. They didn't know what had happened, but no news is
good news, and all that stuff. So I went back up to the farm.
Eventually I got another telegram from Seattle. He was coming
down on the train. He had gotten to Seattle. I don't remember
how he got to Seattle.
DuCasse: It was probably by boat.
Oldfield: By boat I'm sure. I don't think — and he wouldn't fly. So he
probably came down on boat from Seward.
DuCasse: That must have been a fascinating experience for him.
Oldfield: Yes, actually he was so involved in it that people used to tease
him because he talked about it all the time and like to reminisce
about it all the time. He wrote several very expanded versions
of the diary that's in this book, and tried to get them published.
He thought the drawings would make a good book, and he wanted to
write the book. Several people offered to edit it for him. He
got turned off by that idea. He didn't want anybody monkeying
or editing his material. So he turned down these offers.
Finally, he made the arrangements with Grabhorn Hoyem^ to
print it. They used his own diary of the trip verbatim. He
lent it to them, and they told me they were so entranced with
the flavor of his own log of the journey that they printed it
verbatim — typographical errors, phonetic spelling, everything.
85
Oldfield: That would have pleased him very much, but he died just before it
came out. So he didn't get to autograph and he didn't get to see
it. But it has been a very successful enterprise, I think. I
think they've sold them all by now.
DuCasse: Yes, because that kind of personal reminiscence is always fascinating
to people. And this would be unique, you see. No one else had —
well, not since Two Years Before the Mast had somebody really
catalogued and recorded the goings on of a merchant marine ship.
Cravath: This is wonderful: all the days, like "Friday the seventeenth of
April, nineteen days out." He's got the whole thing. Beautifully
done, isn't it?
Oldfield: It's mostly anecdotal things — the colorful character of the men
that manned the ship. It had thirty-some men on it, and not a
one
single liked books.
DuCasse: They just didn't expect that they would have them.
Oldfield: Well, no, it was that the company that operated those boats didn't
give a hoot about the men. They were virtually Shanghai'd! They
handed out money to them to go and drink with, and then they
rounded them up in the bars and dumped them in jail, and then poured
them onto the ship before they sailed. Of course, Otis recorded
all that. The company was a little bit miffed about it at one point.
Cravath: About the book.
Oldfield: Well, not about the book, they didn't see the book. But he told
these stories along with exhibiting the drawings.
DuCasse: That certainly is wonderful that it was preserved in this form in
86
DuCasse: this beautiful book.
came out
Cravath: I remember when this — shortly after Otis died.
Oldfield: Yes, he just didn't quite make it.
DuCasse: What was the date of Otis' death?
Oldfield: May 18, 1969. So it came out in '69, a little after. I guess the
date is in there somewhere.
DuCasse: It's a pity he couldn't have seen the finished —
Oldfield: I'm so sorry he couldn't have seen it. It's a beautiful job.
DuCasse: That's really splendid, though, that it was done.
Oldfield: I think it may have actually been printed before he died. But
by the time it was ready he was not in shape to autograph it.
[end tape 3, side B]
Date of Interview: 4 February 1981
Begin tape 4, side A
DuCasse: When I went over the last session, I found that there were a couple
of things that weren't absolutely clear to me. One of them was:
I don't know that we got the names of your brother and sister,
I wanted to make sure that we got those down. Your brother's name
was —
Oldfield: Edgar.
DuCasse: And your sister?
87
Oldfield: Ruth.
DuCasse: You mentioned about teaching at Hamlin School, but we never got any
dates for that . Do you remember when about how long you taught and
more or less when you started?
Oldfield: I can remember about. I started in '45, and I taught there — some
of it part time — I was still there until '71.
DuCasse: We got your birth date, which was — you want to give that to me just
so it'll be on the tape?
Oldfield: September 21, 1902.
DuCasse: Now we'll get back to our sequence. We stopped after we had talked
about — I finally got this all typed so I knew what was happening.
We talked about the two books that he illustrated, the McTeague
and we went into great detail on the one of his Alaskan trip. That
was later in his career. We got his death date, but there's still
a lot we want to know about Otis prior to that time. One of the
things that might be interesting to others is how he worked. When
he was doing his own painting, did he have any kind of a special
schedule, or did he just work in it between his teaching? Would
you like to tell us a little bit about that now?
Oldfield: I would say that he painted all the time. He was always in his
studio. Of course, he had a few hobbies, too. He became after
we moved to Telegraph Hill, enamored of the boats that he could
see from our window, particularly the rather local ones. He was
not moved by the big ocean liners or the military boats. But
the little schooners that carried lumber up and down the coast,
and the scows that went up the creek to Petaluma and Napa. And
88
Oldfield: also the ones that went up the Sacramento River. He made a number
of models of those, and became so interested that he, for years,
spent at least a day a week doing research in San Francisco library:
going through old newspapers and making lists of sailing dates and
all kinds of little historical data that he could find in old
newspapers about the movements of these boats. I don't know how
far back that went, but it was an awful lot of stuff, I assure you.
DuCasse: That's very interesting that he was aSthorough as that.
Oldfield: He was very thorough. In everything he did he was thorough, but
he was also stubborn. If he picked up a wrong clue and it misled
him, it took an awfully long time for him to admit it. I, of course,
didn't push him into that, so I don't really know if there are
very terrible errors in his records or not.
He became so interested in boats that it was almost consuming.
I imagine that it appeared a little bit with his painting, although
probably not very much. His output was pretty large anyway. He
painted every day of the week if he was free to do it. Except for
his teaching schedule, nothing interfered with his activity in
the studio.
Cravath: He never taught five days a week, did he?
Oldfield: No.
Cravath: What, two days a week?
DuCasse: Yes, usually they would do it two or three days a week.
Oldfield: Usually two days a week, or maybe even less, because a lot of
his classes were special classes, like the Saturday afternoon and
89
Oldfield: morning classes that they had at the art school for people who
couldn't come during the week, and for children. He never taught
a children's class, but for years he had a Saturday afternoon class
which was open to people of any kind. I used to go there with him
once in a while. There was one old guy who came up from a retirement
home, and he would keep saying to Otis, "Come on, professor,
paint it a little bit for me!"
Then he had night classes. But until his last two or three
years at the San Francisco art school, he didn't have a figure
painting class, which is what he wanted all the time. He finally
had for a few years before the war came along, and that was what
ended his teaching career at the San Francisco art school.
After that, he taught at Arts and Crafts,
DuCasse: Was that during the war years or after the war years that he began
at Arts and Crafts?
Oldfield: I think it was after.
DuCasse: That was interesting, because that was one of the things I was
going to ask you, if he taught right up to the end, and I was
thinking naturally of San Francisco. But that's interesting: he
was really at Arts and Crafts.
Oldfield: He was at Arts and Crafts after the war. During the war, he
worked first at Moore Shipyards as a draftsman, and later at
Fort Mason. What did they call it — it was the Army Transport
Service.
I have an amusing little anecdote I can tell you about his
90
Oldfield: work in a shipyard. There were rather stern measures about this
during the height of the war, I guess it was, when output was
very important, to prevent people from moving to other jobs, and
leaving the shipyards and other things short-handed. So there was
a regulation that you couldn't quit. If you quit, you'd be black
balled, and you wouldn't be able to be hired anywhere else. So,
of course Otis quit. He couldn't stand the idea of anybody telling
him he couldn't. It wasn't so much that he wanted to quit; he was
pretty tired of the routine, because it meant getting up at four AM,
and walking to the ferry building, and taking a bus — I don't think
there were boats still running then — I guess he took the train
to Oakland. Then he had to walk some distance.
I remember I used to pack him a lunch with a thermos of soup
in it. He would have this in his lunch pail. It was still fairly
dark when he got to Oakland; he had to walk across some railroad
tracks. Invariably, he tripped and fell and broke the thermos.
He got very annoyed with that.
He would come home and shake the thermos to show me what had
happened. Anyway, he worked there for a couple of years, I guess,
before this order came out that employees would be penalized
if they quit. So he quit. So he was called into the office and
told that he would not be able to find employment anywhere else.
He didn't accept that ultimatum either. So he went to our good
friend, Dr. Eloesser , and told him about what was happening.
There was a court hearing — I don't remember how this court hearing
came about — but the doctor testified for him that this was a sensitive
91
Oldfield: person, and that his health was in jeopardy with the job that he
had. Therefore, he was quite right to quit. And Otis got the
judgment.
So, then he was employed by the Army at Fort Mason. He
stayed there until the end of the war, when all civiliam employees
were turned out.
DuCasse: That's great. What type of thing did he do? Do you remember?
Oldfield: At Fort Mason? Whatever they needed — he designed — he didn't
actually paint them — he designed signs. I remember there were a
lot of "Welcome Home" signs and things like that. He designed the
decoration of the bay sides of the piers, which were planned to
welcome the returning soldiers. I have drawings of those designs
somewhere. I couldn't put my finger on them, but they're around
here somewhere.
Also, he designed floats that were in parades that dealt with
Army personnel. I remember there was one that was a float for
WACs — that's the Women's Army Corps — he was very thrilled with that.
DuCasse: I'm sure he did a beautiful job on that one.
Oldfield: I didn't see it, but apparently they were quite pleased. He
became friendly with some of the officers, and talked to them about
his hobbies. Eventually, one of the — I don't remember what his
rank was — one of the officers asked him to make a model of , I think,
an army tug — I'm not sure. Otis did that. At the presentation, it
was quite a grand ceremony, and set him up a great deal.
DuCasse: This must have been very satisfying to him, to be able to do
something more related to his own talents. Did you, by any chance,
92
DuCasse: do any war work, or were you too busy with, your family?
Oldfield: He violently opposed my doing war work. I wanted to try to do
something. I had done some mechanical drawings, but I had a gap
in my mathematical education, so I bought a book on trigonometry.
I went through it on my own, much to his distress. He accused
me of liking that book better than I liked him.
DuCasse: He was not having any rivals of any description, I see!
Oldfield: No, he was not having any rivals at all.
Cravath: Didn't you work with the Red Cross?
Oldfield: Oh, yes, I did a little volunteer work.
Cravath: I mean, I think he was on the Bulletin of the Red Cross .
Oldfield: Yes, at the Bureau of Inquiry at the Red Cross headquarters.
Through Switzerland. A lot of them were very, very, difficult.
Jewish people here who drew families. The return messages would
sometimes come back, and they were always terrible. We had to call
in the people and deliver these messages.
DuCasse: That must have been heartbreaking.
Oldfield: Yes, it was. Otis didn't mind my doing it, as long as it was
volunteer work. But he didn't want anything that would be more
absorbing than that. I don't think I worked more than two or
three hours a week at that.
DuCasse: At least you had the satisfaction of doing something,
Oldfield: Then it got into another kind of thing. I think it grew out of
this same office. Anyway, I transferred my volunteer activities
to a program which was designed to employ artists in rehabilitation
work, like going into the hospitals and doing whatever the artist
93
Old field:
Cravath:
Oldfield:
DuCasse:
Oldfield:
Cravath:
Oldfield:
DuCasse:
could do to assist in the rehabilitation of wounded veterans.
For a while, through this program, Otis went out to Letterman
Hospital once a week and made portrait drawings of the boys who
were in the beds. The Red Cross provided a little cardboard tube,
and they rolled up their drawings and put them in the tube, and
mailed them to their parents or relatives, of course.
I think did that, too.
I wouldn't be surprised. A lot of people did it.
Otis did it because it was very easy for him, and the Red Cross
provided transportation both ways, so it was very easy. What I
did was work at the museum with the artists who were offering their
services to work in this rehabilitation effort. They had to reviewed
and juried. I worked with Nell Chidester who headed that
program.
Was that at the De Young Museum?
No, it was the San Francisco Museum. We had a room on the lower
floor, and people would submit their work and qualifications, and
then — I said I worked as a juror. I did more than that. I worked
as an assistant to Nell, running the operation. I did typing, and
I did telephoning, contacts of all kinds.
Wasn't Dorothy Liebes in charge of that project?
Well, Dorothy Liebesvorked with Nell and I. Yes, it was in the
carrying-out of the project. It was the same project.
Evidently it had its offices, so to speak, at the museum.
94
Oldfield: At the museum, yes. And the head was Nell . Also,
Leah Hamilton worked there.
So that's the extent of my war work. It really wasn't very much.
I was ambitious to have a job like Otis did, but he opposed the
idea. He had all kinds of good arguments: I should sit home with
my children; my children were young teenagers, and they needed me;
who was going to pack his lunch?
DuCasse: The good old days, when the woman had to be in the home.
Oldfield: Well, that was his conviction.
DuCasse: I can understand that, from what you've told us of him already.
Let's see. After his war work, you said he went over to
Arts and Crafts to teach.
Oldfield: Yes. I'll have to tell you how that started. Mr. Meyer called
one day and asked if he would be interested in a job, a small
teaching job. At that time, Otis knew that he was going to be
terminated, but he didn't know when. So he said yes, that he was
interested in a small teaching job. Apparently Mr. Meyer put him
down for the summer session. He hadn't been terminated yet, and
when summer session started, there was a frantic call from Mr.
Meyer, "What happened to him?" because he didn't show up; he was
still working for the Army. It was a misunderstanding, you see.
DuCasse: I know Meyer was often peremptory, and he probably never even
thought to remind Otis that he was putting him down for
summer !
Oldfield: I'm sure he didn't, because Otis would have known if it had been
95
Oldfield: definite, of course. But I think that Meyer assumed it, and when
Otis didn't show up, he was terribly upset. But Otis couldn't
show up: he was still working for the Army. And he explained it
to him. But Meyer said, "Oh. You said you would come. You accepted
the idea." But he didn't make it plain to him when he was expecting
him. So that was his beginning at Arts and Crafts. He did start
in the fall semester, because by that time his Army job had been
terminated.
DuCasse: That would have been in '45, wouldn't it?
Oldfield: Forty-five, I think so.
DuCasse: I imagine that they needed someone like Otis, because Marty took
ill in the fall- of '42 and died in January of '43. And he was their
main figure man, drawing and painting. I'm sure that they needed
a man like Otis who could do so many things.
Oldfield: He did start then; I guess it was in the fall of '45. I don't
have a record of it; I'm not perfectly sure. This sounds right,
doesn't it?
DuCasse: Yes, it does. V-J Day was in August of '45.
Oldfield: And when did Spencer Macky take over?
DuCasse: That I don't know. It was when Ralph — it was in '46 something.
I think Spencer Macky was —
Oldfield: I seem to remember that it was quite soon after Otis started working
there.
DuCasse: Then Meyer retired. He lived a little while longer, but he was
retired then.
96
Oldfield: Spencer immediately gave Otis a lot more work. So he was almost
full-time at Arts and Crafts for a few years. Then he and Spencer
quarrelled. I don't really know what it was about; all I know is
what Otis reported to me, which was that he was in Spencer's office
one day, and he showed him something. And he said, "Can you do
that?"
And Otis said contemptuously, "I make it; I don't fake it."
Almost as bad as Benny Bufano saying to Lee Randolph: "I don't
know about Lee Randolph. If you're a painter, I'm a banana
peddler."
DuCasse: Oh, dear! How artists love to ruffle up the feather of fellow
artists. My father did it all the time.
Oldfield: I know. That's why I'm telling you. I don't know whether it
should be for publication or not, but they're all gone now.
DuCasse: Oh, certainly. They're all gone. It's not going to hurt
anybody. These things are so natural; they're so much a part
of an artist's life that it has to be in there.
Oldfield: Anyway, Spencer fired him. He was reluctant to be fired. He
argued with Spencer about it. But Spencer wouldn't give in.
So then Otis said, "If you fire me, you'll only last a year or
two." And this was true.
DuCasse: Yes, because that was just acting at a moment of spitefulness,
which we all have. He should have swallowed his pride.
Oldfield: Yes, we all have it. But it was a little bit contemptuous — it
was a lot contemptuous of Otis. I'm not so sure he didn't
97
Oldfield: deserve to be punished.
DuCasse: Well, he was confident of what he could do. I think that your
peers should recognize that a lot.
Oldfield: Of course, he had always had very enthusiastic backing from Spencer.
I guess it hurt.
DuCasse: He probably felt that he had the confidence of the man; he could
say what he felt.
Oldfield: Yes. And he felt that he was being unjustly criticized, and that
it was unfair or something — anyway, I don't know. That's a little
story of Otis' career at Arts and Crafts.
DuCasse: Did he do any teaching after that?
Oldfield: Only private teaching. He always had private classes.
DuCasse: And did he have them in his own studio?
Oldfield: Yes, in his own studio. After we moved out here. But we had
a studio on Russian Hill where he had classes for twenty years,
I guess.
DuCasse: Was that when you were living on Telegraph Hill?
Oldfield: No, we lived on Russian Hill after Telegraph Hill. He never had
classes in his studio on Telegraph Hill, primarily because there
wasn't room. It was a very small place where we lived there. And
he never was willing to have his studio away from home. I talked
him into it once; I thought it would be good for him and good
for me. There were small children around that bothered him, and
I couldn't keep them quiet. One of them told me the other day,
he used to come out to the back door and yell, "Keep those children
98
Oldfield: quiet! I'm working."
DuCasse: [laughter] That's natural. Do you remember when you moved from
Telegraph Hill?
Oldfield: Yes, '37. October of '37. We stayed there until '60, when we
bought this house. That was twenty-three years.
Cravath: Is this all recording?
DuCasse: It's all recording. It's so nice and quiet —
Oldfield: It's going to be very, very boring to listen to.
DuCasse: No, not at all! All these things, all these ideas about Otis
and the things he did — you never know when something will be
the kind of information that somebody else is trying to find.
So whatever may seem trivial to you might not be to someone else.
Cravath: Last week did we discuss our nursery school?
Oldfield: I don't think we've said anything about it.
DuCasse: No, we shall bring that in.
Cravath: I think that was a most important institution.
Oldfield: Do you remember the years?
Cravath: Well, let's see —
Oldfield: I remember we had three two-year-olds, and one three-year-old
between us. So this had to be around 1930. The nursery school —
Ruth and I got together to try to help each other, because caring
for these little kids was pretty time-consuming. I wanted to work,
although I wasn't doing it very much. I had found that I had a
tendency to try to paint when I put the children down for a nap,
and be a little testy with them when they'd wake up before I was
99
Oldfield: ready to quit.
So we decided that we could give each other a day off by each
one of us taking on the whole job one day a week. Ruth would
send her twins over at about eight o'clock in the morning right
after breakfast. And on my day, I took my two to her. They
would play. We had a little deck on the back of our little flat
on Telegraph Hill where we had a little sandbox and some things
for the children to do. Then I would take them for a walk so that
they got some good exercise. Come back and put all four of them
in the bathtub together, and put them all down for a nap.
Cravath: After lunch. You fed them first, didn't you?
Oldfield: Yes, I fed them first, I guess. I gave them lunch first. Then
I would clean up the faces and stuff and put them all down for a
nap.
I remember Beth was a thumbsucker. Ruth was doing everything
she could to stop it. You know they don't stop it at all anymore.
DuCasse: Oh, no. You have to let them "do their thing."
Oldfield: So, poor little Beth, she had these rings around her fingers
to keep her — mittens at one time. But there was also a little
metal device. It was like rings that tied around. Those rings
made callouses on those poor little fingers. But I put them on,
and I put the mittens on mine.
Cravath: I don' t remember this !
Oldfield: You don't?
Cravath: [laughing] No!
100
DuCasse: That was the period, though, when one interfered with what were
considered bad habits, so they wouldn't become permanent.
[end tape 4, side A; begin tape 4, side B]
DuCasse: Now, you were talking about pediatricians.
Oldfield: I remember the pediatrician warning me that if I deviated as
much as ten minutes from the feeding schedule, I would give my
child a psychosis. [laughter] Of all the crazy things!
DuCasse: Which, of course, nowadays they're thinking that that's just what
you were doing! You can't win!
Oldfield: The result was that I had one child who has a feeding problem
because of this rigidityYou were not allowed to pick your baby
up if it cried. What a horrible! — it's a marvel that the children
that were born in that period didn't grow up more psychotic than
they did.
Anyway, I had a lot of fun —
Cravath: I did, too.
Oldfield: And the dinner table and luncheon table conversations were just
killing sometimes.
DuCasse: You'd get the backlog of what went on at dinner from your two
children, I guess, didn't you?
Oldfield: No, they stayed for dinner. They had lunch and dinner and were
picked up just in time to go home and go to bed. It was a
wonderful day for the one who was off, but a very hard day for
101
Oldfield: the one who was in charge. However, we survived all right.
Cravath: I enjoyed it.
Oldfield: And I enjoyed it too.
DuCasse: Let Ruth put in a word or two about her day, now, in relation
to this. Did you follow pretty much the same schedule?
Cravath: Oh, yes. Helen, you brought the children down to me, and I used
to take them up to you, right after breakfast, you see. Then
I would go through the routine of bathing them, and lunch, and
the nap, and when they got up from the nap. We'd have supper;
they'd play. And we'd give them supper. Otis would pick the
girls up after supper.
DuCasse: I think that's wonderful.
Oldfield: Just take them home and put them to bed.
DuCasse: So you had one full day each that you could really do your own
work in.
Oldfield: And it was a full day. You could make your dental and doctor
appointments for that day with confidence, know that you'd have
time no matter what. Of course, the idea was to free each of us
to do a little work. I don't know about Ruth, but I know that I
did
always other things that I needed to do so badly that I think the
time got mostly filled up with that.
Do you remember any of the conversations we overheard, Ruth?
Cravath: Yes, I remember one in particular. It was our children discussing
what their fathers did. One of mine said that their Daddy works
in a bank. I think it was Beth who said, "Oh! He makes money!"
[laughter]
102
DuCasse: Very impure to the child of an artist!
Cravath: You probably remember some, more than I do, Helen.
Oldfield: I'm trying to think. I don't remember any.
DuCasse: Except that they did have very interesting conversations.
Oldfield: Yes. And largely it was about the food, which one of mine never
liked, no matter what it was, and one of Ruth's would always eat,
no matter what it was! [laughter] They balanced each other out.
Cravath: It was really funny when it came to dessert time. Helen's little
girls didn't go much for dessert. But Sam would eat all his
dessert, and then he'd move on toJaynes place, and eat all her
dessert, and move on the Rhoda's, and eat all her dessert.
Wasn't that the routine?
Oldfield: Yes, that was the routine.
DuCasse: He must have enjoyed eating.
Cravath: Oh, he did. Beth didn't — whether he got her dessert, I don't
remember. But I remember he'd get three or four desserts.
Oldfield: They were awful cute.
DuCasse: And that was wonderful for those children to have that companionship
in their youth. I'm sure they were good friends as they grew up.
Oldfield: I think that it brought them close together, don't you?
Cravath: Yes.
Oldfield: And also brought me very close to Ruth's children. I've always
felt as though her children were like mine because of that time.
I don't know how long we managed to keep this up, but I think
it was a year or more, don't you?
103
Cravath: Oh, yes.
Oldfield: I remember taking them for walks, all four of them. Sam was a
bit unpredictable, so I held on to his hand, much as he hated
it. He was the only boy, you see, and he was treated just like
a little girl, and I suppose that bugged him. Although I don't
remember that he ever said anything, except that he didn't want to
hold my hand.
I knew that my two were trained , if I allowed them to run ahead
of me, to wait when they came to a crossing. At first I was
not sure whether Beth would or not, but she finally convinced
me. She would run ahead. She had this lovely, clean, straight
hair, which was cut in a sort of a dutch bob. When she would
run, it would bounce, and her head would waggle around a little
bit: she was just like a rag doll. She seemed to have no bones
or anything; she was so loose and moved so easily. I used to
love to watch her .
Cravath: You know, I don't remember that I took them for walks. Do you
remember?
Oldfield: I don't know what you did! [laughter] I know that I did, because
I felt that they didn't get enough exercise on that little deck
that I had. I think I took them for two walks every time I had
them. Sometimes we would go up — it was before the Coit Tower was
built, and there was a sort of open space up there, and some ruins
of the old buildings that used to be up there, and outcroppings
of concrete — stuff like that — and eucalyptus trees, and gravely,
open earth. I let them dig in the earth with their fingernails
104
Oldfield: and make little houses out of the rocks. They played around
beautifully there.
I used to take them for at least one walk every day where we
would go up and down Telegraph Hill. That really was a good
workout, you know.
Cravath: Well, they had them walking down to my place. But you'd come
and get them in the car at the end of the day.
Oldfield: I don't remember the details of that very much. Maybe they went
both ways in the car. I don't remember that. I remember Sam
Bell coming to pick yours up, and I think that he walked them home.
I'm not sure. So they got back, too.
Anyway, I was doing my job as conscientiously as I could, and
I thought they needed exercise beyond what they could get on
that little deck. It was rather confining. And the sandbox was
not totally satisfactory, because they poured it in each other's
hair and all that stuff. [laughter] That's the way children are.
DuCasse: You mentioned that at one point you tried to get Otis to rent
a studio elsewhere so he would have more peace. But that didn't
work.
Oldfield: It lasted, I think, one month. He allowed me to persuade him,
and he rented a room in the Monkey Block. He took some canvasses
down there. My idea was that I create a husband who had a working
day routine, instead of being always underfoot and always needing
to have everybody conform to what he wanted. I thought that he
ought to be equal to taking care of his needs for himself. I
105
Oldfield: think he came home for lunch, however, but I don't remember
for sure about that.
Anyway, he had this studio for about a month, and he moved
some canvasses down there, and the materials he needed for working.
At the end of a month, he couldn't stand it anymore, so he moved
back. That was the end of that.
Then after we moved to Russian Hill, he pre-empted the largest
room in the house for a studio. It was what they called a rail
road flat. There was a hall that went all the way from the front
door to the back. Across the back was what was intended to be a
dining room, Italian style. A sort of party room. It was the
whole back of the house. It was by far the largest room that we
had. It had built-in cupboards and things which were designed
for keeping dishes and things, and he made use of those. He
moved all of his stuff in there.
But it was the only place that we had during the years that
we lived there where we could have guests for dinner. So when
we wanted to have guests for dinner, we had to move the easel and
his stuff aside and set the table in there. The only other possible
place was the kitchen, and this was not a very gracious place to
entertain your guests. So this became the accepted custom. He
got used to it; he didn't mind. But we had to re-arrange things
when we did that. And it didn't really look like a dining
room, because there was paint on the floor and all that stuff
and his work all around.
106
DuCasse: This place that you're living at now — is that where you had, perhaps,
a little more convenience.
Oldfield: Yes. What happened was that I had an illness. I was working,
working almost full-time, if not full-time by that time —
Cravath: That's when you were teaching at Hamlin School?
Oldfield: I was teaching at Hamlin, and I think only at Hamlin. I think
it was after I stopped teaching at St. Rose. I stopped teaching
at St. Rose because my arthritis got so bad that I couldn't
negotiate those stairs. You remember the classrooms that we
had were on the top floor. Going up was difficult, and coming
down was worse.
DuCasse: Did you teach at St. Rose's before Ruth did?
Cravath: Yes, we did. She taught sewing.
DuCasse: You both taught there at the same time?
Oldfield: I taught sewing in the same room that Ruth had a sculpture class
in. I tried to pick up all the needles and pins, but they were
always getting pins or needles in the clay. So it wasn't really a
very good combination. But anyway, we got along all right.
Eventually I had to give up teaching at St. Rose, although I
liked it very much. While I was there, they tried to persuade me
to take on a typing class. I remember I told Sister Leonard, who
was the principal, that I didn't know anything about typing. I
was a peck-and-hunt typist. She said, "Oh, you don't need to
know anything; just buy a book." [laughter] They certainly didn't
107
Oldfield: think very much of typing.
DuCasse: It was probably just one of those necessity things that they
put into the curriculum.
Oldfield: There was a nun who had been teaching it, you see, and something
happened so she couldn't do it anymore. I was there; I guess at
that time maybe I was the only lay teacher that was there. Anyway,
I didn't want to do it because I knew I was not competent. I didn't
know anything about typing; I never learned to type, except peck-and-
hunt.
DuCasse: We've digressed slightly, which is fine. It was after the move
to Joost Street, where there was more space for Otis to work.
Oldfield: Yes. I was talking about my illness. I had had a bad afternoon
at school; I remember that I had had to excuse myself from my
class to go to the bathroom and vomit. I was feeling very sick
when I got home, and also had a pain in the tummy. So Otis
reminded me afterwards that when I got home I had said to him,
"I have classic symptoms of appendicitis." I had never had any
such symptoms before in my life, and really didn't believe it
was appendicitis, but I knew what the symptoms were. So that's
what I said to him. I went to bed and I couldn't eat. A
couple of days went by. I guess it was a weekend. I pampered
myself all weekend.
Finally I called the doctor in Oakland who was treating me
for arthritis. I told him about my symptoms. He said, "Oh,
you probably picked up a flu bug. Take some Pepto-Bismol. " Which
108
Oldfield: I did, and it didn't do me any good at all. Finally the pain and
the nausea were so great that I was just moaning and groaning
around there. So Otis put me in the car and took me to the
surgeon, who was the only doctor we really knew very well at that
time. He didn't know what was wrong with me, but he gave me a
shot for the pain and ordered me into the hospital.
I was in the hospital for two or three days, where I was
checked, and tested, and they had discovered that I was not
running a temperature, that I didn't have an elevated white count.
They had no idea that I had an infection. Finally, they took me
in for exploratory surgary. I think that the doctor — he didn't
tell me so — he probably thought that I had a growth in the uterus.
But it turned out, by the time I got into surgery that it was a
ruptured appendix.
So I stayed in the hospital for quite a lon£ time. I remember
they shot me full of penicillin all day and all night. I came
through it. When I got home, the building where we had been
living for the last twenty years had been sold, and the people who
had bought it were starting remodeling procedures. They'd cut
holes in the walls, put in a central heating system, and they
were putting in complete copper plumbing, and the plumbers were
hammering and banging — I was just out of the hospital! It was
a ghastly affair.
Our children thought that they should try to help at this
juncture. They were living in this neighborhood, and they
109
Oldfield: brought us out here. The agent that they knew showed us this
little house, and Otis fell for it immediately because the
garage had been turned into a room where he could make a studio.
He didn't care about anything else at all. But he saw a possible
studio. So he said it was fine. He never stopped complaining
about that converted garage in later years. But he was responsible
for our buying it and our choosing it, because I didn't think it
was an adequate studio. I was feeling so ill anyway I probably
didn't think much of anything.
So we made an offer of quite a bit less than the asking price,
and it was accepted. First thing I knew we had bought a house
and we were moving out here. I came home from the hospital the
end of February, and we moved in here — no, it wasn't the end of
February. It must have been the middle of February. We moved in
here the first of March, 1960.
\
Cravath: That was a good move.
Oldfield: I have been very comfortable here. It's a nice, comfortable
little house. And I had more conveniences, which I had never
had before. But Otis never stopped complaining about it. He
used to look out at the view and say, "Ugh. Just like Los Angeles."
And then he referred to it as "out here in Siberia." He just
hated it.
Cravath: But he's the one who —
Oldfield: He chose it because he saw a possible studio, and that was all
he cared about. He didn't care about anything else — about the
110
Oldfield: environment we lived in. That was my problem. So that's how it
happened .
We had a few thousand dollars which we could pay down on it.
The people who wanted to sell it, I guess were very eager to
sell it, so they accepted our offer, which was quite a bit less
than they were asking. So we moved in, and I've been here ever
since.
DuCasse: Well, it certainly is charming and cheerful.
Oldfield: It's comfortable for one or two people. It isn't very big, but
it's comfortable.
DuCasse: By that time, of course, your married children were out and grown.
Oldfield: Oh, yes, both of our daughters were married by this time.
DuCasse: So that's good. You had the freedom to be in a place that was
just for the two of you.
Oldfield: And the studio is a comfortable place to work. I still work in
it, and I think it's quite nice?
Cravath: Have you been in it?
DuCasse: No, I just looked in the window.
Oldfield: After Otis died, I felt that the use of that studio was like a
riches. I had never had one before, you know. He was used to
having the best room in the house devoted to his work space. So
it was a bit of a come-down for him, because there's no plumbing
in it. I had a little sink put in after I started working in it.
He had to come in to wash brushes or go to the bathroom. He didn't
like that. And then going through two doors. He was used to using
Ill
Oldfield: the family bathroom on Russian Hill. But it didn't mean going out.
It just meant walking up the hall a little bit.
DuCasse: What we would like to also ask you is the names of some of the
artists that both of you were associated with, or Otis was
associated with, during those years. We've spoken about Ralph
Stackpole. Were there any others in that early period in
San Francisco after his return from Paris that he was particularly
intimate with, or that he had friendships with or dealings with?
Sometimes these are interesting facts for others. For instance,
Piazzoni — he must have known Piazzoni.
Oldfield: Oh, yes, and he loved Piazzoni. Everybody loved Piazzoni. Piazzoni
was influential, I think, in getting him his first opportunity
to teach at the Arts School .
Cravath: At the California School of Fine Arts?
Oldfield: Yes, at the San Francisco Art School. I remember that Otis was
fond of quoting Piazzoni, because he and Piazzoni had a conviction
in common that painting portraits or doing anything that was
subject to the approval of the buyer was tantamount to prostituting
your art. They talked about it a lot, anyway. I don't know how
deep the conviction was, but they talked about it a great deal.
I remember that Otis was fond of quoting Piazzoni as saying, "I'd
sooner take the plough!" because Piazzoni had a small farm in the
Carmel Valley where he spent a lot of time. He would sooner
plough that land in order to make a living than to accept a commission
which didn't leave him in full control.
DuCasse: They were rugged individualists, weren't they?
112
Oldfield: I think that this kind of rigidity is out of favor now. I judge
that it is, although I don't have any very specific evidence to
po int to .
DuCasse: I think the artist now has really to work in many different fields
in order to earn a living. In that period —
Oldfield: It was almost all that was open!
DuCasse: Yes, that's right. Now artists are not as rigid about it. They'll
work at anything that they have to work, as long as they can keep
up their own.
Oldfield: So Piazzoni was a close friend. I think his closest friend, though,
was Rinaldo Cuneo. Rinaldo and Otis shared a birthday. They were
not born in the same year, but they were born on the same day.
So all the way back to very, very early in my marriage — I guess
the first year or maybe the second — I made a birthday cake for
both of them. I remember that Otis built a cardboard form which
I used to bake these cakes in — I guess he had to make more than
one, because it went on for quite a few years — it was in the shape
of a crab. So I made crab birthday cakes for years and years and
years .
DuCasse: Is that because they were Cancerians?
Oldfield: They were Cancerians.
DuCasse: I have two grandchildren who were both born under the sign of
Cancer. I understand that.
Cravath: Two boys?
113
DuCasse: No, one boy and one girl.
Oldfield: Do you understand that sign? I don't think I ever shall.
DuCasse: Well, I should say I'm aware of some of the characteristics of
the sign.
Oldfield: For years, Otis was so confident of his sign, and so denigrating
of mine because I'm a Virgo. Whenever he got mad at me, he would
say, "It's that damn virgin!"
DuCasse: Well, all I can say is, we have our problems getting along with
other signs, too, don't we?
Oldfield: So for years I felt that I had been born under an inferior sign.
Although it wasn't my fault, it was just the way it turned out.
He just downgraded my sign and upgraded his until he got the message
across. It lasted for quite a long while.
We have one granddaughter who is a Virgo. But I've got a
whole flock of Scorpios. One of my daughters —
DuCasse: I'm inundated with Aquarians.
Oldfield: I love Aquarians. I think that's a wonderful sign. Of course,
I don't believe in any of this stuff. It's kind of entertaining.
It's amusing. Of course, you have something to blame things on if
you need it. It's something to talk about.
My favorite young man, who has become related to me by marriage —
he's married to my granddaughter — is not only an Aquarian, but
he's a Valentine. He was born on Valentine's day. That's La&r-ie.
DuCasse: We spoke earlier of Stackpole, but we didn't go into very much
detail.
114
Oldfield: Oh, I told you about their meeting in Paris.
DuCasse: Later on, after he got back to San Francisco and they renewed their
friendship, they were also good friends.
Oldfield: They were also good friends. In fact, Ralph was Otis' best man
at our wedding.
Cravath: The wedding was in his stoneyard.
Oldfield: The wedding took place in his studio. And, of course, we were
neighbors on Telegraph Hill. I became very close to Ralph's
second wife, Jeannette. We shared babysitting problems and were
constantly together. We also developed our sewing skills together.
We were so close together in actual physical space that we were
in each other's houses every day.
But Otis' personal friendship with Ralph was not as close
as it was with Rinaldo.
Cravath: I didn't remember that.
Oldfield: Well, you might not even have been aware of it, dear, because —
I noticed it, of course. We did spend time together. A few
years ago, I was going through old snapshots in Otis' storage.
He loved to squirrel things away. He had little packets of things
stored in cigar boxes and such up on the top shelf. After I
started using the studio, I wanted to know what was there, and
also clear some space for myself. So I went through some of these
things. I came across some pictures that were of Ralph and Jeannette
and Otis and me and our two children and Francis Stackpole on a
beach party.
115
Oldfield: I had a memory of the day; I remember being on the beach and who
was there, but I didn't know what beach it was. I didn't know
whether it was Rockaway, or what. Anyway, I sent copies of them
to Jeannette, and told her that I couldn't remember what beach it
was. She wrote back immediately: "Baker's beach."
DuCasse: Isn't that funny? I was going to say, I'll bet it was Baker's
beach .
Cravath: We used to go there from the Art School.
DuCasse: I used to be taken there as a child.
Oldfield: So we had that kind of a friendship, a family sort of friendship.
But Otis' real buddy was Rinaldo.
Now, let me see. Who else was around here?
DuCasse: Maynard Dixon?
Oldfield: No. Otis never had a close friendship with Maynard Dixon.
DuCasse: But they had met, I suppose.
Oldfield: Oh, yes, and Otis worked for Maynard. When he was getting
established in San Francisco, Maynard had some commissions on
which he needed help. He employed Otis to do some of the work.
I don't know what it was or what happened to the mural
[end tape 4, side B; begin tape 5, side A]
DuCasse: I'd be interested in the fresco, because I think we missed that
116
DuCasse: when the tape stopped — the fresco technique. Now, was that
Maynard who was most interested in it, or —
Oldfield: It was Otis. And the reason that he was useful for Maynard was that
Maynard didn't do fresco either — or at least not at that time.
So he wanted somebody who would work on his oil murals. Otis
was qualified for that, and also Otis needed work. He was trying
to establish himself here, and didn't have a teaching job yet,
and was living very frugally.
He used to go to the cafes: Elgin's, and Poppa Coppa's. At
Bigin's he would go around sketching the diners at the tables,
and then Bigin would pass the hat, collect a few dimes and nickels
for the artist. And, of course, the sketches were given to the
patrons. It was Columbus Avenue at Adler Place. It was 12 Adler
Place — Bigin ' s .
Now, Poppa Coppa's was — where was it at first? — down on
Montgomery Street, I think. Then it moved out to Spring Street
off of California. I remember being there once at a dinner which
had been given by Bill Gerstle. I can't remember what the occasion
was. Anyway, I was seated next to Maynard Dixon. Across the
table from us was a great Russian beauty who was the wife of
Archipenko — Madame Archipenko. Did you ever meet her?
DuCasse: I did. I studied with him for a summer.
Oldfield: Yes. Well, she was just a devastating Russian beauty. I, at
the time, was young, and I guess I was staring at her. I must
have been staring at her, because Maynard nudged me and said,
"Atta girl, kid. Get a good eyeful. Genuwine European golddigger!"
117
DuCasse: [laughter] Oh, great!
Oldfield: That was typically Maynard, too.
DuCasse: Was Edith Hamlin on the scene at this point?
Oldfield: No, she was not. This was before her time.
Cravath: This was while Maynard was still married to Dorothea Lange
Oldfield: I think it was between. I don't know how much time there was
between. Dorothea left, you know, and went with Paul Taylor.
I think it was at a time — I don't remember the year — right
after Dorothea had left and married Paul Taylor.
Cravath: I think it was around 1931.
Oldfield: Something like that, yes.
I have another little story related to Maynard Dixon, and this
is mostly about Otis. When Otis first knew Maynard, he was married
to Dorothea, and they had two little boys. They invited Otis to
dinner.
Cravath: And you, too, right?
Oldfield: No, it was before. This was while Otis was working for Maynard.
I don't know whether it was before I knew him, but it was certainly
before I married him. Anyway, Otis went to dinner, and Maynard
showed off his skills as a father, and took Otis into the bedroom
to watch him diaper one of the babies. Otis was terribly disgusted;
he thought this was just awful ! So demeaning for a man to do a
thing like that. And this was the man that he had respected as an
artist! He was so disgusted. I got this from Otis, naturally,
I wasn't there. Then he said to me, "In Paris, the artists don't
have children." And that got spread around the whole art community,
118
Oldfield: this little contemptuous remark of Otis'. And when Otis married
me and promptly had two of his own, he had to take a lot of ribbing.
DuCasse: Oh, I'm sure he did. [laughter]
Oldfield: It happened to him every once in a while, because he was also fond
of saying: "There's one thing about my art: it doesn't make any
noise." Referring to musicians. Then when he got a trumpet player
for a son-in-law, he took a lot more ribbing. He called those
things "boomerangs." Came back and hit him.
DuCasse: I think the visual artist very often feels that they have the
advantage, that the musician really has to create too much sound.
I've heard that from other artists.
Oldfield: Well, it's not only sound, they feel it's performing and not creating.
They don't think of performing as creative. They have more respect
for composers than they do for performers.
But anyway, this was just some little snide remark that he
liked to make. He made it once to Henry Cowell and almost got in
a fight.
DuCasse: Oh, I can believe that! He knew Henry Cowell, did he?
Oldfield: Yes. They weren't close friends, but we used to meet at parties
a great deal. I remember one when Cowell performed, and had the
bad judgment to come over and ask Otis how he liked it. And Otis
came out with his famous remark: "One thin£ about my art — it
doesn't make any noise." And there's nothing more insulting you
could say to a musician than to call what he does "noise."
I remember Cowell looked at him and said, "If you were a little
bigger, I'd wipe up the floor with you."
119
DuCasse: Unfortunately, it was rather true. Cowell made a lot of noise.
Oldfield: Yes, he made a lot of noise, and he was a big guy, and Otis was
very small.
DuCasse: Let's see who else we have to ask you about. Nelson Poole, I
think you said you and Otis might have known.
Oldfield: Yes. We knew Nelson and Helen, but there was not a close relation
ship.
DuCasse: Can you think of anybody that you'd like to talk about?
Oldfield: I can't remember his name — the other fellow, the Frenchman who had
Labaudt
a studio — Poulanc. And of course, Otis and Lucien were close. They
were close, although there was a certain amount of rivalry between
them. Otis used to call Lucien a "professional Frenchman." I guess
he wanted to be the only representative in the group, and Lucien
was a genuine Frenchman. Also he made snide remarks about his
dressmaking.
DuCasse: I think my father looked down upon Lucien for that reason, too.
He always felt that that wa1!0 really " bona f idea- f or an artist.
Oldfield: But Lucien did everything with a flair. Much later in my life I met
a woman who had gone to Lucien to have a gown designed and made for
her. He had said to her, much to her distress (at least as she told
it to me), "Madame, how can I create for you unless I see you nude?"
She was not prepared for this at all.
Cravath: That was Lucien?
Oldfield: That was Lucien.
DuCasse: He believed in working from the inside out, didn't he?
120
Oldfield: At every cocktail party, he was always in the midst of anything that
was going on that was a little bit risque — if that word is suitable —
I don't know. For instance, there was one girl — I can't remember
where it was, but it was a long, long time ago. There was a girl
who was bragging that she could stand on her head. And Lucien
said, "I'll hold your legs." [laughter] And he did!
DuCasse: That was right up his alley!
Oldfield: That was right up his alley.
DuCasse: You're right, he had flair.
Oldfield: Yes, he carried it off. I'll never forget the last time I saw him:
he was announcing that he had accepted this assignment to go to
Burma with the Army to record the — he was assigned by Life magazine
to record the activities of the Army in various of the war theaters.
I think first he went to China, Chunking.
DuCasse: He also went to India, didn't he?
Oldfield: Well, he was killed in Burma. He was on his way from China. He
spent his first few months on this assignment in China somewhere.
He threw a big party to celebrate his departure. He had an Army
uniform. He'd gotten this Army uniform, and he had a cobra skin
that was conspicuous on the wall of his studio for many years. So
over this Army uniform he had draped the cobra skin. He was putting
on a show. He had a wonderful time at his own parties.
So he told about how he was going to do this. This was just one
of my memories about his show-off tendency. And, of course, he
never came back. He was on his way from Chunking — that is the right
121
Oldfield: name, isn't it, of that capital? — and the plane crashed landing in
Burma, and he was killed, and all of the work that he had accumulated-
and he was prolific, it must have been an awful lot — was destroyed
in the wreck. It was a really very tragic ending.
But he went out in a blaze of glory, and I'm not sure that he
wouldn't have liked that. He loved to be conspicuous, and he
would do almost anything to get the attention. Like holding up
that girl's legs — I'll never forget it. She was in a cocktail
dress, and in those days they were pretty short. But her dress
was around her ears, you know, it went right up when she stood
on her head. And Lucien was there holding up her feet. [laughter]
I would like to have a photograph of that. But he loved it in
himself. He bragged about it.
Cravath: Somebody should have made a cartoon of that one.
Oldfield: Maybe someone did. I never saw it. But there was a big crowd there.
It was one of those big cocktail parties. I used to get terribly
bored, because they always interfered with my home routine. I had
to find a babysitter, and someone who could not only stay with my
children but feed them their dinner, and often put them to bed.
By the time the cocktail party is over, your own dinner has been
thrown off schedule because you've eaten a lot of those little
sandwiches and had a couple of drinks, and I didn't feel like
going home and cooking. And we were usually too poor for my husband
to offer to take me out. It just disrupted the day, and I didn't
really like them very much.
122
DuCasse: Are there any others that you think of or come to mind?
Oldf ield : I mentioned Poulanc a while ago. He was a Frenchman, and Otis was
fond of him. Most of their conversation was in French. His studio
was near Nelson Poole's. I know they used to spend a lot of time
together jabbering in French. Apparently they agreed on a lot of
the hang-ups that Otis had. Whether they're hang-ups or not — I
haven't known anyone else — of course, he and Rinaldo agreed very
well. We spent a lot of time together as a foursome. I remember
at one period Ethel Cuneo and I agreed that we would write a book
about what it's like to be an artist's wife. We never did it, but
we planned it; we talked about it, because we shared an awful lot
of experiences. But it never got to the point of being put down.
In fact, I think it was because Rinaldo died. He died rather
prematurely. He got cancer and he died. Ethel was absolutely
destroyed by his death for a while. But she got over it, and she
married someone else, and left the area. We corresponded for many
years, but after a while it gets difficult. Lives have drawn apart,
you don't see each other at all. So it sort of petered out.
But we were very close friends, and spent lots and lots of evenings
together, sometimes planned, and sometimes just unannounced one
or the other would drop in. We would spend long evenings, Otis
and Rinaldo talking about painting, and Ethel and I talking about
what it's like to be an artist's wife. [laughter]
DuCasse: Were Cuneo's and Otis's ideas about painting very different?
Oldf ield: No, they seemed to agree very, very well. They were very harmonious,
123
Oldfield: Also, Rinaldo had a store of information which interested Otis.
He had been born in San Francisco to an Italian immigrant family,
and had grown up in North Beach, and known Telegraph Hill when it
was a semaphore station, and when it also was the site of this
castle — somebody's castle, where they had jousting matches. Oh, he
had a lot of very interesting lore to talk about about the days
when he was a kid.
When he was eighteen, he joined the Navy. He had an enormous
collection of tatoos. He learned tatooing. He tatooed all his
shipmates when he was in the Navy himself. Also, he had been an
amateur boxer, starting in the times when these jousting matches
took place on Telegraph Hill. He participated in some boxing
matches at the same time, or shortly after. But he joined the
Navy at eighteen, and he was in the Spanish-American War. He was
a little older than Otis. I don't think it was as much as ten
years, but it was nearly that much. Maybe it was more than ten
years, because the Spanish -American War was 1890, wasn't it?
DuCasse: Eighteen ninety-eight, I think.
Oldfield: Yes. Otis was born in 1890, and Rinaldo was eighteen at the time
of the war .
DuCasse: It if was 1898, if my memory serves, he was about ten years older.
Cravath: Helen, did Otis know Moya Del Pino very well?
Oldfield: Oh, yes. This was through Helen, because we knew Helen, who was
then Helen Horst.
Cravath: She was one of Otis's students.
124
Oldfield: She was one of Otis' students. She and her sister used to come to
that studio where he had his first private class, in Leidesdorf
building. Carol Wirtenberger and Clifford White. They would be
delivered and picked up by the family chauffeur. So they were a
bit conspicuous, because always before the class was over would
come this knock on the door, and a very polite voice saying, "I've
come for the Misses Horst." They would feel they had to leave,
because they knew their mother had sent the driver for them. She
didn't want them out any longer than that. This, of course, was
where I first met them. But then, later, after Otis and I were
married, they used to come to the studio in the Montgomery Block
for private lessons, not only in painting but also in bookbinding.
So I got to know them very well there.
Then we moved to the little flat on Telegraph Hill. Helen used
to come up there almost every day, as I remember it. I remember
she drove a great big Packard — what did they call it — roadster,
because it had a convertible top which was always down. And she
had an eggbeater on the radiator that turned in the breeze. Her
boyfriends used to come up and leave bouquets of violets and things
in our mailbox, and I got to know a lot of her boyfriends.
Eventually, she met Moya. And Moya was working for that — what
was the name of that decorator who had the boat in Sausalito? —
lived on a boat — this was in the twenties. He was well known; he
was a decorator. I think it was the barque Echo that he had. He
had it all painted up in black and white design.
125
Oldfield: Anyway, Moya, when he first came to San Francisco, was an unknown
Spaniard. He had worked for an interior decorator in Spain. He
had a lot of funny stories to tell about that. Do I have time to
repeat one of them?
DuCasse: Certainly.
Oldfield: He told about this fellow that he worked for having bought the
furnishings of a house which had been sold off by the heirs to an
estate. The man who was employing got everything — paintings,
furniture, everything. And Moya, while he was employed by him,
learned to decorate furniture, refinish furniture, and make
paintings. Of course, he was already trained as an artist, but
he did whatever the boss wanted. One day this fellow brought in
the things that he had acquired from an estate. Among the paintings
was a picture of a priest — a bust — a small painting of a priest.
Moya's employer said to Moya, "It's a nice face on this. Take it
over to the Prado and copy a uniform from a Goya onto that face."
So Moya did, and brought it back, and it was fine; it was just
like a Goya. Someone came in to the place of business and saw this
painting and identified it as a Goya, and the fellow who was offering
it for sale said, "No, that's not a Goya; that's a painting that
has been painted from a Goya that's in the museum. That's not
an original Goya." But the fellow thought that he was just trying
to get out of selling it to him.
So he went and did more research, and brought proof that this
was a Goya, and insisted on buying it. So eventually he bought it.
126
Cravath:
Oldfield:
Cravath :
Oldfield:
Oldfield: Moya, many years later, was in the National Museum in London, and
saw his painting as a Goya. That's a silly little thing.
DuCasse: I know, but these are what is wonderful to hear. No one else would
know these except someone who could talk to it at that time.
That's very interesting.
I remember the last time I saw Moya was when I went over to be
with Otis after he was ill.
Over to Ross.
Yes, because Helen and I were close friends and we had more in
common than meets the eye here, because our ancestors had been
associates. My father was a hop grower, and Helen's father was
a hop broker. In my childhood, I used to come to San Francisco
with my father and go to the Horst Brothers' office on lower
California Street, where my father would get his checks and things
like that. So the name of Horst was familiar to me, long before
I knew Helen.
We remained close friends until her death.
DuCasse: Did she continue her art?
Oldfield: She was always very interested, but she always felt that her gift
was minor, and that she needed someone behind her to push her all
the time.
Cravath: She worked in my class for a while, but she was very modest.
Oldfield: She was very, very modest, and very, very retiring.
Cravath: She was talented; she could have if she'd really wanted to.
127
Oldfield: She did a lot of bookbinding. In fact, I remember one of her
close school friends was about to be married, and she wanted to
make an especially nice gift for her. So she had Otis help her,
supervise her, and help her make a little parchment book, which
contained an illuminated and hand-lettered version of the marriage
ceremony — the traditional one. It was all done and illuminated on
parchment, and bound in a little white parchment missal. Anyway,
it was a totally dedicated work, because every bit of it was
painstakingly produced by hand. Otis had some experience with
manuscript illumination and lettering. So he just sort of held
her hand while she was producing this thing. She finished it
finally. She finished it and gave it to the friend as a wedding
gift.
So during those days, we spent a lot of time together and
became very close friends. When Helen married Moya, this just
increased the interest that we had in each other, I guess. We
saw each other very regularly, and were very fond of each other.
It was very distressing to Otis and me when Moya became ill.
Well, it's always difficult to watch someone go through the
decline.
DuCasse: He was not that old, was he, when he became ill?
Oldfield: No, but he was in his sixties. No, he wasn't. I think he was
about — he was just past seventy when he died.
Cravath: Moya was younger than Otis, or older?
Oldfield: A few months older. Very close to the same age. I don't
remember his birthday.
128
DuCasse: No, it's just interesting. So often age does not really matter,
when you have something like art as a common bond.
Cravath: They don't ever think of age.
[end tape 5, side A; begin tape 5, side B]
DuCasse: We were talking about those artist friends who were very much
a part of your life. You remember now the ones that we just
reviewed, and maybe you want to add some others that we haven't
gotten into. Remember we talked of Maynard Dixon, and Lucien
Labaudt, and Poulanc, Moya Del Pino, and Helen. Were there
any others that you can think of?
Oldfield: I don't think of any others. I think that I mentioned all that
were close to us at that period. Then there was a later period,
when there was a younger group.
DuCasse: What time would that have been?
Oldfield: That would have been in the forties and fifties.
DuCasse: Do you want to specify some of those?
Oldfield: The first name that comes to my mind is Nathan Oliviera. He
was Otis' student at Arts and Crafts. That's where they met.
Nathan and Mona used to come to our studio on Russian Hill quite
regularly. They were very fond of each other. After Otis died,
Nathan was instrumental in arranging a show for him at Charles
Campbell Gallery.
129
Cravath: Was that one the only show of Otis's work there?
Oldfield: Yes. That was the only show,
DuCasse: It was a sort of a retrospective, then, after his death.
Do you remember the date, or at least the year of that?
Oldfield: It was '76. I've had one other show of Otis' work, which was
sort of a memorial show at the Labaudt Gallery. That was in '72.
I haven't managed to arrange any other showings. It's really
too much of an undertaking, you know. Coping with framing, and
transportation. It has been suggested a number of times that I
try to arrange a show at the Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento,
because Sacramento was his home town, you know. But nothing's
ever come of that, largely because of my own indolence. It
scares me, the thought of trying to do it. So that hasn't gotten
off the ground at all .
DuCasse: If someone in Sacramento could instigate that, and do the work.
Oldfield: I have a friend up there who would instigate it as far as the
gallery is concerned, but I still would have to handle the pictures,
see that they were properly framed, and arrange transportation.
And that's ninety miles; it's a tremendous job. I just falter when
I think of it.
Cravath: Would Jane be interested in doing that, Helen?
Oldfield: She might. It's very interesting about Jane. What she does is
try to prevent me from being foolhardy. And she is always terribly
concerned about proper insurance, about transportation hazards, and
she would want all kinds of guarantees which places like that
museum are not about to provide. Of course, I'll suggest it to her
130
Oldfield: again. I haven't suggested the idea of a show in Sacramento for
a long time. But I'll mention it to her again and see how she
reacts. She would have to do all that hard work which scares me.
She would if she didn't think that there might be hazards connected
with it that would be foolish to risk.
DuCasse: I was thinking of maybe a hundredth anniversary or something, a
centennial kind of thing.
Oldfield: He was born in 1890. His centennial won't be until 1990. That's
quite a ways off.
DuCasse: When we did Marty's, we missed his by a few years, but by a few
years later. It would have been 1869, but the museum just barely
opened. They had his retrospective in 1974.
Oldfield: I have the catalogue on it.
DuCasse: Isn't that a beautiful catalogue? That is, incidentally, out of
print. They are thinking of possibly trying to have it reprinted.
I have two copies left, and that's all there is.
Oldfield: I have one, in case you ever feel terribly pressed and need to
know where these is another one. I want to keep it, but I just
wanted you to know that if you come against a real problem, that
you know where there is another one.
DuCasse: Thank you. That's very interesting about Nathan Oliviera, because
he's a very well respected artist in the area now. It's nice to
know the connection with Otis.
Oldfield: Of course, before he left the San Francisco school, the now San
Francisco Art Institute, he had several other names who have been
131
Oldfield: quite well known as students: Diebenkorn and Hassel Smith are two
that I can remember. Both of them departed considerably from his
ideas as their fame grew.
DuCasse: But they had both studied with him.
Oldfield: They had both studied with him.
DuCasse: Well, they certainly did depart. There's no doubt about that.
But whatever they had learned I'm sure contributed to what they
eventually did.
Oldfield: When Otis first came to San Francisco, he was considered very far
out. The newspapers referred to him with such phrases as "the artist
with the flaming pallette" and all kinds of things like that. But
he never really wanted to express himself in a totally abstract way.
He didn't mind breaking down images into semi-abstract or nearly
abstract forms or components, but he didn't ever like the idea of
starting with a blank canvas and just putting shapes on it without
connection with any physical object.
So at the time that the abstract-expressionist movement became
dominant in San Francisco, he was totally outside it. That was
what I meant when I said that for a while, his painting was in the
mainstream. But then in the years I think beginning sometime in the
forties and coinciding with the time when he was no longer teaching
at the art school in San Francisco, his style began to decline.
He had maybe ten or fifteen years when he was riding the crest of
the wave. It seemed a short time, but it was crammed full, the time
that he did have. After that, he felt himself considered "old hat."
132
DuCasse: Marty was in that same position.
Oldfield: And he resented it intensely.
DuCasse: Oh, of course. I think they both very rightfully did.
Oldfield: Especially since his ideas had been so avant-garde when he first
came, you know, and pronounced so by all the people who knew him.
DuCasse: it shows also how fast change comes and goes.
Oldfield: How fast. That is the thing that appalls me.
DuCasse: The whole mood of art changed, say, between 1920 and 1940. It
was a revolution in this country. Men like Marty and Otis who had
been so well schooled and so well trained and so disciplined just
were not interested in playing around. That's what they had done
in their youth.
Oldfield: This was the time when people like Sam Francis came along.
DuCasse: Are these pictures over here of him?
Oldfield: No, he was someone that I knew slightly because he lived across
the street from me for a while, and I knew the woman from whom he
rented a room.
Cravath : Was that on Union?
Oldfield: On Union Street, yes.
DuCasse: I think we got that in the last tape.
Oldfield: I think it's in there somewhere. She told me. She was the one
who told me about taking him in when he got out of the army. He
was undecided as to what he was going to do with his life, and
enrolled at the Art School. Of course it was just the right time
for him.
133
Oldfield: This is the way it goes: so much, it seems to me, that happens
to artists and to other creators, too, I'm sure, is dependent
on fad and accident. The things that happen in the world, and the
moods. They can just play havoc, or they can give such a boost
that it's phenomenal, and sometimes seems rather unwarranted.
But that's not for me to decide.
DuCasse: True. Fortunately, as things settle, and time goes on, we begin
to get more perspective. Now, they are beginning to appreciate
the key men who contributed to this development in California.
So Marty and Otis and all of their group are going to gradually
come into their own and they're going to be looked upon as key
men of importance.
Oldfield: That's what we're hoping for.
DuCasse: So thank goodness for that.
Oldfield: Yes, thank goodness. It doesn't every stay the same for very
long.
DuCasse: And it's almost as if the younger artists were painting themselves
into a corner. They're getting so completely apart from everything
that they're going to have to change. They're going to have to start
back.
Oldfield: Otis liked the idea of being an ivory tower artist. He didn't want
to go with the trend of the times; he was stubborn about that.
That was one of his reasons for not joining the crowd, I guess.
But it was also convictions, of course, which were more deep-seated
than that.
134
DuCasse: That's interesting about his thoughts, because those are some of the
things we were hoping to fill in in case we hadn't touched on them
before. Did he say anything? I mean, do you remember some of the
things he said about twentieth century art in general, or any of the
"isms?" Did he have strong opinions?
Oldfield: He felt that total abstraction had no concept.
DuCasse: He's right. Even Kandinskjgaid that. But the other men thought
they could get around that.
Oldfield: Well, they still do, I guess. They're still trying. I don't
totally agree with it; I think there's concept in abstract
expression. But it's not the same thing that he considered
concept.
DuCasse: What he was thinking of maybe was that it's non-objective.
Non-objective art is a little different from abstract, because you
abstract from something.
Oldfield: Yes, that's right. I think non-objective — although Kandinsk\^ic*
things that were almost totally non-objective.
I know that a lot of other people have done it too. In fact,
I enjoy working in that idiom myself. I like just patterns, and
value and form. I remember Marty coming up behind me when I was
in his painting class, and he would say [huskily], "Where's the
value? Where's the proportion? Where's the 'eenfeeneeteesimal'
plane?" [laughter] As a matter of fact, when he got through, I
didn't think there was anything there at all! [laughter]
DuCasse: Then you had to start all over again.
135
Oldfield: Yes. Well, he would keep us working for so long on trying to find a
subject. Especially when it was a model, and the school was paying
the model's fee, and something had to come out of this. I knew I
had worked until there wasn't any point in doing anything more
sometimes. I was an obedient student, and I would go on and try to
find something.
DuCasse: You see, this is the wonderful thing about both Marty and Otis,
that they had a deep grounding in the beauty of reality. To them
it would have been pointless to try and depart too far from that.
It's sad, but the younger generation of artists are wallowing
around, really trying to come back to that. They're having a hard
time doing it.
Are they really trying?
They are. You remember the figurative movement was a return "to reality,
Yes, but that was quite a while ago.
That was, but you see, it didn't last too long, because the abstract
expressionism wastoo strong. But I think many more are beginning to
come back. This photographic realism is an extreme; but maybe this
vacillation between extremes will bring us something more human.
Oldfield: I know that Otis particularly — because I know more about him than
I do about Marty — felt that nature was the base. It was all right to
depart; in fact, he would be the first one to say that art is not
holding up a mirror to nature. It's nature expressed through
temperament. And the temperament is very important. He had
rather disparaging things to say about what he called decorative
Oldfield:
DuCasse:
Oldfield:
DuCasse:
136
Oldfield: art. He considered most non-objective painting primarily decorative.
That's why he considered it without concept. He felt that it was
missing something essential.
DuCasse: That's interesting. How did he feel, say, about the work of
Arthur Mathews, which is now considered decorative. He was the
leader of the so-called Decorative School. Was that kind of
decorative art also something which he felt was —
Oldfield: Yes, I can't swear to it, but I would guess that he would have
included that. It's not emotional enough. For him, expression
had to be emotional. It had to contain the emotion of the artist
and his response to it. Whether it was landscape, a still life,
or a figure, the idea applied.
Cravath: Did he ever study with Arthur Mathews?
Oldfield: No. When he was here, I think Arthur Mathews was the head of the
art school —
DuCasse: At the turn of the century.
Oldfield: At the turn of the century was he? Well, Otis was here then. He
was here, but he was at the Best's school. He wasn't studying
at the Art Institute.
Cravath: It was the California School of Fine Arts.
Oldfield: I remember some of the anecdotes that I've heard about the art
school at the time that Arthur Best was there. Isabel West was a
student there, and so was Ralph Stackpole. He told me that she wore
a bustle, and that the other students in the life class would put
their charcoal on her bustle. [laughter]
137
Cravath: Who told you that, Ralph?
Oldfield: Ralph.
DuCasse: Oh, that's lovely. That is cute!
Cravath: Isabel Percy West.
Oldfield: She was one of my favorite teachers.
DuCasse: Oh, she was a good teacher. And I think she had a tremendous personal
interest in the students, too.
Oldfield: Yes. I remember that she used to invite us over to Sausalito weekends,
I remember going over time after time with crowds of students. I
think ten or twelve of us would go at a time. And bless her heart,
she would not kick us out, she would give us dinner.
I remember that one of the group that I went with was Louis
Miljarik, and Dorothy — what was her name — afterwards married
Otis Shepherd — I can't remember what her name was before. Anyway,
those are two of the people I remember who were in the group that
went to visit Mrs. West on her invitation for weekends. We didn't
stay all weekend; we would spend the day. But it meant going
across the bay. We would get there as early as we could, and stay
all afternoon and talk, and then she didn't want to kick us out
because she had to feed us. And she did it! She was marvelous.
Her poor husband suffered through it.
DuCasse: Yes, he was not an artist, was he?
Oldfield: No. I think he was a newspaperman, wasn't he?
DuCasse: I'm not sure. Do you remember her little electric car?
Oldfield: Yes.
138
DuCasse: I can still see her riding around in that little car.
Oldfield: I remember that from the days down on Alls ton Way.
DuCasse: I saw her in the last years of her life. Amazing — she was still
getting around.
Cravath: When did she die?
DuCasse: Just a couple of years ago. I think it was not too long ago. It
was quite recent. She was in her nineties. Wonderful old girl.
Let's see. Are there any others that you can think of the
younger group? You mentioned Diebenkorn and Hassell Smith —
Oldfield: They, of course, were not close friends. They were people that
I knew as students. I remember quite a few names of people who were
students who are not important enough to be included in this thing.
It was his habit to invite certain students of whom he became
rather fond on that basis of teacher-student to come to the studio
and pose for a little head or something. I used to put them up,
and it was my turn to get the dinner and feed the visiting students
at that time. I went through a long period of doing that, especially
after he was teaching at Arts and Crafts. I still know a few of
\
the students whom I met at that time. One is Steve Perun .
Who else was there in that group? Shirley and ^loyd Massengill —
these names don't mean anything. But there was quite a large group
of them. They would come and spend a Sunday or a Saturday in the
studio with a lot of talk. Then they would still be there, and I
would cook up a pot of spaghetti or something and feed them all.
One day, a group of these people came in. I saw them approaching;
139
Oldfield: their cars were parked across the street, and I saw them all
converging on our house. I didn't realize that this was going to
be any different from the other times when the group had come over.
But it happened to be my birthday. And they had come with a cake
and a gift of French perfume. It was very, very sweet of them.
We had an evening. Of course, I still cooked the dinner, but
they had brought the dessert. But there was a big crowd of them.
I guess there were probably drinks, too. I don't remember that.
DuCasse: Must have had a little bit of red wine somewhere.
Oldfield: Yes, red wine or probably martinis, because that was the martini
era. I loathe martinis now.
DuCasse: So do I! [laughter]
Oldfield: But that's what it was all the time, or maybe gin and tonic. They
probably brought that, too. Otis had a store of cognac, which he
hid under the French couch. He hid it under the studio couch —
DuCasse: It was handy, but not visible.
Oldfield: Handy but not visible. I heard for years from these young people
how amused they were the first time he offered them a drink, and
pulled out the couch and got a bottle. [laughter] He was very
parsimonious with his cognac.
DuCasse: You have to be a real appreciator —
Oldfield: I don't think I ever became an appreciator of that. It tasted like
medicine to me. But he enjoyed it, and apparently a bunch of those
kids did, too.
They would come over and tell him their problems. I remember
140
Oldfield: there was one couple — his name was Jim Robinson, and he had been
a student at Arts and Crafts, and he had been a Marine in World
War II. After coming back, he had married. He'd had enough of
war; he didn't want to be involved in the war at all anymore.
Then the Korean war came along. He arrived at the house with his
wife one day, almost in tears. He said, "They took me." He
had to go back in tthe Marines. And he was terribly upset about it.
He didn't want to leave. He had done it, and he didn't want to be
involved again. So he was another of the Arts and Crafts students
who became friends. They really became friends because the
association went on for many years after Otis had left Arts and
Crafts.
DuCasse: I think very often a teacher will make friends with certain of his
students, who really become life-long friends. I have several
who have been like that to me.
Oldfield: I have too. In fact, the only valentine I got this year, not counting
my daughter's flowers, was from a student that I had in the fifties.
She said, "Hi, teacher."
I have another one who is in Indonesia now — a very intense little
person who has been over there for three years. She keeps writing
to me. Her mother lives in Tiburon. Her mother comes around and
takes me out once in a while. This is all inspired by this little
girl who was my student.
Cravath: Was that at Hamlin?
Oldfield: At Hamlin, yes.
141
DuCasse: We talked about several things that Otis was interested in in the
twentieth century development. Did he have any artistts in the
past that he revered? Marty had some of his favorites —
Oldfield: That far back, I don't remember —
DuCasse: Were there any that he ever mentioned?
Oldfield: Oh, yes, he talked a good deal about Renoir. He liked Renoir, and
he didn't like Picasso.
DuCasse: I can understand why.
Oldfield: But he did like Mat isse.
DuCasse: Mat isse was much more serious than Picasso.
Oldfield: Well, I don't know about that. I admire a great deal in Picasso.
I am just overcome by awe viewing some of his draftsmanship. I
think that he was a great artist. But I think a lot of things of his were
tongue in cheek, too. And, of course, he got away with it, especially
in the later years. But that doesn't spoil him for me, because he
did a lot of things that were very expressive. However, Otis didn't
go for him very much.
I remember, though, in our studio on Russian Hill, Otis had cut
out a small head of Picasso — I think it was a photograph — and tacked
it up on the studio wall. One day, our two children, who were little
kids at the time, were in the studio, and Jane asked Rhoda, the
older one, "Who's that?"
And Otis said, "Don't you know? It's President Roosevelt."
[end tape 5, side B]
142
[begin tape 6, side A]
DuCasse: Let's talk about Diego Rivera, because you just approached it once,
and I said, "Let's wait until it kind of comes in naturally."
Oldfield: All right. It may be a little repetitive; I don't know what I told
you.
DuCasse: That won't make any difference.
Oldfield: My first memory of Diego — and I think I may have told you this
story — was the day that we picked him up in our little car. I don't
remember where, but it was on his first visit to San Francisco, in
the thirties. It was when he did the Stock Exchange.
Cravath: And the Art School?
Oldfield: And the Art School was done on that first visit too. We picked him
up somewhere — it wasn't at the airport — I don't remember where it was,
As I remember it, I have a mental picture of a downtown street. So
it must have been somewhere downtown. He climbed into the back seat
of our little car —
DuCasse: Could he get in?
Oldfield: He got in all right, but the fenders went right down on the wheels,
and the wheels couldn't turn. So I had to get out and give him
my seat, which was what they called the suicide seat, the front seat.
In that position, apparently the wheels would turn.
Cravath: Where did you go then?
Oldfield: I got in the back seat, where he had been. I didn't weigh as much;
he weighed well over three hundred pounds .
143
Oldfield: He was sweet and kind. I don't know where Frieda was. I don't
remember that she was with him on that occasion, but she might have
been, because he might have completely absorbed my attention. She
was always so retiring and quiet that she might have been there,
and maybe I got in the back seat with her. I don't know.
Anyway, we got to know him quite well after that. As I remember,
he lived in the studio which was in Ralph Stackpole's^-
Cravath: That was 715 Montgomery Street.
Oldfield: Yes, which was where I had been married, and which Ruth occupied
later. Then he began accepting all of the social invitations that
he received as a matter of policy. He couldn't have been interested
in absolutely all of them. I remember that Ralph used to complain
that he was wearing himself out stupidly and unnecessarily, because
he didn't have to accept all of those invitations. But one of them
that he accepted was from a friend of ours who wanted to have him
present at a Christmas party. So somewhere I have a photograph of
my two little kids and Diego and Frieda and Otis and me sitting
before a Christmas tree all decorated with those little paper hats
you used to get out of bon-bons, and false moustaches, and whistles
and things. We were all dressed up in those things. I would offer
to find it for you, except that I have been trying to find it, and
can't put my finger on it.
DuCasse: Someday when you're looking for something else, you will.
Oldfield: Yes, that's the way it happens.
144
DuCasse: I think Diego was that type of person: very charming and affable.
Playful.
Oldfield: And he liked people; he was interested in people, and he didn't mind
putting himself out for it. I remember another occasion when a
Chinese group had a big banquet — I think it was in his honor, and
he probably felt that was an obligation too. But he sat for hours
and hours on one of those little square lacquered stools, that must
have cut him in two, because he was so heavy. And he overflowed on
all sides of it, you know! He must have had an imprint
Anyway, he did it, and he didn't show any signs of pain. He
answered all their questions. He talked extemporaneously about
everything that came into his mind. And everybody who was present
was fascinated. 1 was there with Otis because Otis had been
instrumental in starting this Chinese group through his student
^un Gee. Yun was really the instigator of the Chinese Art
Association, I think they called it. The members met in Yun 's
studio. They thought of him as a sort of a guru. Most of them
were not even necessarily attracted to painting; but this was an
opportunity to be a part of some group which gave some prestige
to the Chinese who were in a rather submerged position at the
time.
When I went toy un 's show at the Oakland Museum — was it last
year or the year before? — I was amazed to find that nearly all of
the people there were Chinese. I would have thought with the
145
Oldfield: Oakland Museum's mailing list, there would have been a lot of others,
But we were among the few who were non-Chinese.
DuCasse: Well, probably because that is a period that is only now being
revived, in a sense — that period in which —
Oldfield: When he was in San Francisco, it was twenties. It was late
twenties.
DuCasse: Yes, and it was S. MacDonald Wright and His whole group, you see.
Now, that's being explored; so many who got the invitation for
it may not have recognized the name or realized that this was an
important person to see.
As it happened, I received the invitation, and I couldn't go
that day for some reason. But I went down to see the exhibit
• very soon after, and I was just enthralled; I thought it was
magnificent. His work is beautiful. That was a very important
period. Billy Justema knew S. MacDonald Wright, and through him
I got a lot of information on that program. That was a marvelous
example — in fact, I told my students. I said, "Here is an example
of that kind of painting which you don't see very often. Go and
see it."
Oldfield: I have become very friendly with his widow. She is hoping to be
here again this Spring sometime, depending on whether she's
invited to lecture — she's a photographer. She hopes to be invited
to lecture for a photography exhibit which is to be held in Long
Beach. If she does come, she will come up here, and I would like
to see her again. But we do correspond.
146
Cravath: I'm so sorry I didn't get to meet her when shewas here for that show.
Oldfield:i You can get a chance to do it if and when she comes up again. But
it's a little bit in the lap of the gods, you know.
DuCasse: Not to change the subject, but because I don't want to get too far
away from it, you mentioned just briefly about Frieda. Did you
then other times have a chance to get to know Frieda very well?
Oldfield: Oh, yes, Frieda was at my house many times. I thought she was
beautiful, exotic, but I couldn't talk to her very much. She
didn't speak any French, and she didn't speak any English. And
besides, she was very ill. She would spend the evening on the couch,
or retire into her bedroom and just stay there, because she couldn't
participate in the conversation, and she was feeling miserable.
In this little photograph I have of the Christmas that we spent
together, she is sitting — she wasn't tired enough not to be visible
in the photograph — she's in the photograph. As I remember, most
of the time she was just absent. She would come and put in an
appearance.
The second time that he came, when he painted the mural which ;is
now at City College — he worked on Treasure Island — she was in much
better shape then.
I remember seeing her downtown when her color was good.
Cravath:
DuCasse:
Oldfield:
DuCasse:
Yes, I remember seeing her at that time also.
more active
I remember seeing her then, when she was really — although she
was still rather out of it as far as conversation was concerned —
But she could speak a little. I remember talking to her.
147
Oldfield: She could speak a little . She had a few words. And she was very
amiable about it; she tried. And she was i.in better physical
condition. This was the time when they remarried. They had been
divorced, I believe, between the two visits. The second time
they had their second marriage ceremony here. They're the only
people I know, besides my own daughter, who have done that. My
daughter has married the same man three times. Remarried twice!
DuCasse: Speaks well for the state of marriage, doesn't it?
Oldfield: I don't know whether it does or not. I think that it must mean
that she has matured a little bit, although it sounds to other
people as though she has trouble making up her mind. I don't
know which it is .
But I do know that she is not being critical of him now, and she
definitely was.
DuCasse: Did we ask you if you had met Orozco when he came to San Francisco?
Oldfield: Yes, I met him, but just at parties. I never really got to know him.
I met him because I was politely introduced to him, and he politely
acknowledged it. I also met Covarrubias that way.
DuCasse: Oh, and Covarrubias was a charmer, too.
Oldfield: But I didn't get to know him, either. It was just a matter of
introduction and a little polite conversation.
DuCasse: It was wonderful that they got to San Francisco, because they had
really influenced the trend of arts in the forties here.
Oldfield: Well, especially Rivera, I would guess.
DuCasse: Yes, I guess he really had more personal influence.
148
Oldfield: I rather feel that in my own estimation, Orozco is the greatest
artist of the three. But I think that Diego had the greatest impact
on San Francisco.
DuCasse: And I think from what you have said now about how he put himself
out and was so open to meeting and mixing with people, I think that
was part of it. He was genuinely interested in becoming a part of
the community while he was here.
Oldfield: Yes. And of course, many of the artists who were working here —
oh, another name that I may or may not have mentioned, who was
an artist who was close to us was Ray Boynton. Ray had been down
there, and met Diego, and learned the fresco technique in Mexico.
Most of the artists who worked at the Coit Tower had come under his
influence — under Rivera's influence. Ralph Stackpole, and Victor
Arnautoff — they all had — I guess Victor studied with him, I don't
know whether Ralph did or not. But they were very close friends*
It was Diego's influence that caused all of those murals in the Coit
Tower to be frescos.
DuCasse: Did Otis do any of those?
Oldfield: No, he did an oil painting which is in the elevator foyer. In
fact, he was in charge of the group that worked in oils.
Cravath: Didn't Ray Boynton do one of those, too?
Oldfield: No. Rinaldo did two, and Moya did one and Otis did one. There
are only four. They were not done in place, like the frescos.
They were done in the studio and applied to the walls. Otis much
preferred that way. He was never intrigued by fresco.
DuCasse: That's a messy proposition.
149
Oldfield: It's a messy proposition, and it's like— I think a little bit of
his aversion was the same as his aversion to water colors. It's
an instantaneous medium. You must make up your mind, and you must
go right ahead and do it while the time is right. You have to work
when the plaster's wet.
DuCasse: That was very consistent with his attitude towards watercolor techniq'
Oldfield: Well, he was consistent in some ways, anyway.
So they painted those panels in the studio, and they were
applied to the walls. Otis also did the lunettes that are over
the elevators. They're little seagull things.
He had some influence on the subject matter, and he chose the
men he wanted to work with him. Originally, one of them was to have
been done by Bill Dahl. Bill backed out for some reason. I think
he was teaching at Stanford at the time, and he didn't have enough
time to give to it. So he backed out. That was the reason that
Rinaldo did two of the panels. Moya did one, and Otis did one.
Cravath: They're there now.
Oldfield: They're there, and they're using the elevator again now. So I
guess they're accessible. The room was blocked off for a while.
DuCasse: Those have all been restored now, at least the frescos have.
Oldfield: The frescos — I don't know whether the oil panels were damaged or
not.
DuCasse: They probably weren't, because it seems to me that to begin with,
they are not quite as fragile. And I think they were in a position,
perhaps, where they weren't quite so easily —
150
Oldfield: They're not so easy to scratch.
DuCasse: When they're down below your arm level, why, it's too tempting.
Oldfield: Those oil panels are too. They're tall; they come down to maybe
twenty-five or thirty inches from the floor.
Cravath : Can you go up into the tower now?
Oldfield: You can go up the stairs, I guess, if you have the fortitude.
Cravath: Do you remember when we had that tour for the Oakland Museum?
Oldfield: Yes.
Cravath: [to DuCasse] Did you come along?
DuCasse: No, but you and Dorothy and I went specially, just the three of us.
I took all those slides, remember, because I needed them for my
history of California art. That was before it was open to the
public.
Cravath: I haven't been there since. We'll have to go some time.
DuCasse: Yes, we'll have to go. I'd like to get pictures now of those oil
paintings, because they were in a position where the light wasn't
very good.
Oldfield: Well, they aren't very well lighted. But I expect you could — with a
flash.
DuCasse: We could try it anyway.
Cravath: [to Oldfield] Would you like to go?
Oldfield: Yes, of course. Let's do that, if I can manage it.
DuCasse: Some beautiful day like this, we'll manage it. We'll get you up
there.
Oldfield: Okay. Well, I don't want you to have to carry me, but 1 can walk.
151
Oldfield: I'm slow, and it takes me a long time.
DuCasse: Fortunately, when we get up to the top, then you don't have to do
anything more than walk straight lines.
Oldfield: Yes. And I'm very nostalgic about that thing, because I was
living on Telegraph Hill at the time that this was done, you know.
I used to take my children and go up there and walk around and see
the progress and watch them working.
I remember one day Victor had his youngest son there, Jake.
Jake was a little towheaded kid —
Cravath: As wide as he was tall!
Oldfield: Yes. Victor kept introducing him as his little Mexican, because
he was born in Mexico .
Then I remember Kenneth Rexroth and someone else who was up
there trying to organize the artists into — I think they called it
a guild. But it was really a union.
Cravath: Was Artists' Equity a result of that?
Oldfield: No, I don't think so. I think this was another thing entirely.
It was called the Artists' Guild. Otis was the thorn in the flesh.
He was not a joiner; he didn't want to join anything, although he
was a member of the Art Association and the Artists' Council for
years. That he considered constructive. But he never joined
Artists' Equity — or maybe he did at the very end.
Cravath: I remember we were both on the board.
Oldfield: I did. I think we had a joint membership at the very end of his
life. Somebody talked him into it.
DuCasse: You could get the blame for it.
152
Oldfield: [laughter] I guess so. Anyway, he refused for a long time because
he disapproved of these organizations which tried to safeguard
artists. He sincerely believed that you became a professional
artist by creating and showing your work and earning awards like
prizes, or being able to sell. He thought that was the only way
you could become an artist. And anything that was going to give
you any guarantee or even help you was suspect, and he didn't want
anything to do with it.
DuCasse: How did he feel about teaching? Did he feel that that was a little
outside therealm of the creative artist?
Oldfield: No, he approved of teaching. He loved to teach, and I've had many
of his students, including Nathan Oliviera, say that he was the
most inspiring teacher they'd ever had.
DuCasse: Oh, I'm sure he was. He had so much spirit; that's what students
need in their teachers.
Oldfield: Yes, he was inspiring. But he liked teaching. It is a creative
endeavor after all, and he found it creative. He much preferred it
as a way of making a living to any kind of commercial art. That
he scorned, although he did take a few commercial assignments when
he was having problems having enough to eat when he first came to
San Francisco .
For a short time, he had a job on the San Francisco Call, making
drawings of San Francisco scenes. I have somewhere a collection of
some of them — not the original drawings, but the newsprint ones.
I remember that one of them is the Powell Street cable car turntable
with all the people piled on it. He did quite a few of those. They
153
Oldfield: sent him out on assignments. The end of that came quite a long time
before we were married.
He told me the story; I wasn't present at the actual happening.
He was assigned to cover a French ship which was in dock. So he
went —
DuCasse: He must have enjoyed that.
Oldfield: He got drunk. [laughter] This is by his own account; I wasn't
there. He had such a grand time, and they plied him with wine and
whatever — I don't know what he got. But he didn't get any drawings.
He went back to the newspaper the next day and got fired. He also
went to the hotel where he was living at that time. They were
shocked, and plied him with coffee and a cold bath and sobered him
up. But he didn't get the drawings he was assigned to make. So
he lost his job on the Call.
Cravath: That was before you were married.
Oldfield: Yes, quite a while. I was not aware of it until he told me about
it.
But he did do a few commercial things like that. However, I
don't think he really thought of that newspaper assignment as
commercial. It was, of course, but it also called upon his fine
art abilities.
DuCasse: Oh, absolutely. And his own personal response to things, too.
Oldfield: I remember another of the places that he covered where he was sent
was a prize fight. There were drawings of that somewhere.
DuCasse: Who was the artist in New York that did the same subject?
154
Oldfield: Bellows?
DuCasse: Bellows. It's interesting: some artists are very intrigued with —
Oldfield: Well, Otis just made drawings. But he was very good at pencil
sketching, charcoal sketching he did —
DuCasse: I imagine that he had a technique that really worked.
Oldfield: Very expressive, and done with great economy of line.
Cravath: You'll have to show —
Oldfield: Well, you know where they are, honey; you get them down anytime
you want.
DuCasse: They must have — Marty had that same gift. I think that was stimulated
and developed in Paris. I think the artists there — they never stop
drawing. Wherever they went, they were sketching.
Oldfield: There's a whole collection — I don't have them here; Jane has them
in her house — of little sketches about that big that he made on
the streetcar. Anyplace — always had a stub of a pencil and this
little book.
DuCasse: And that, of course, is why they became good, solid artists. They
knew nature so beautifully; they knew character.
Cravath: Right. With just a few lines —
Oldfield: And this was his subject matter as long as he lived: people. He
loved to do people. He did some still life, but he found it a
little bit dull. It wasn't exciting enough for him.
DuCasse: I don't blame him. I hated still life when I was a student.
Cravath: But he did a lot of lovely little landscape sketches.
Oldfield: Yes, he did lots of landscapes.
155
Cravath: Dozens of little ones that we used to do up in Gold Run.
Oldfield: Yes, at Gold Run, and also at Alta. He tried to sell those. He
offered them for ten, fifteen, twenty-five dollars. Toward the
end of his life, people kept talking him into showing these things
and trying to sell them. The experience was so humiliating and
discouraging, you know. Friends would arrange for wall space where
he could show them in banks, or public buildings of various kinds.
This meant getting them framed, hanging them himself, taking them
down, and bringing them home. People would say things to him, passing
by, like, "Can't you do any better than that?" Oh, it was so_
insulting!
DuCasse: They were just not able to appreciate what those were.
Oldfield: So he finally came to the place where he thought it was very foolish
to expose himself to that sort of thing. So he would absolutely
refuse.
DuCasse: I don't blame him, because that's not right. It's still very
difficult; even the collectors of art will always say, "Do you
have any paintings?"
I say, "No, I don't. But I have his finer drawings, that he
felt were the best thing in his life." They're not interested.
They want a painting; they feel that is a complete thing. While
a drawing can be just as complete, if not more so.
Oldfield: I wonder if we'll ever come to the place where people want Otis'
paintings.
DuCasse: They probably will, because now — we were saying this a little bit
156
DuCasse: earlier — more and more they are beginning to appreciate the men who
were in that transition period, if you will, who didn't jump on the
abstract expressionist bandwagon. They remained true to their own
selves; now they are going to be seen in the proper perspective to
what they were. And really, from what greater individuals as
+y\£i^r WOT^O -|
artists "^because they remained true to their own lights. But it's
coming.
Oldfield: I'm not sure that I'll be around. But I'm trying to get my
daughter interested enough in it so that she will carry on and
that she will have access to them. She's already trying to help
me preserve them and record them.
DuCasse: We must — this is something I'm certainly going to do, and I'll take
this upon myself while there are still people at the museum that
I know. You see, the Oakland Museum is trying to remedy this
unfortunate lack of interest. They have been systematically giving
retrospective shows to these key figures. I'm sure that they're
intending Otis is to be one of them. But I'm going to mention this.
I'm going to tell them that I've been doing this work with Helen.
I'm going to say, "You've got to get that done, you've got to
do that, especially while Helen is able to gather together the
materials." Fortunately, if the Oakland Museum did it, they would
do a lot of that. I think that they would relieve you of a lot of
the heavy work.
Oldfield: Well, Terry St. John has been over here and looked at the collection
of paintings.
157
DuCasse: Yes. You see, he's the one who would be interested in it.
[end tape 6, side A]
[Date of Interview: 25 February, 1981; begin tape 6, side B]
DuCasse: We're going to go back to some of the material on our first tape
and get the real reason behind the delay in your going eventually
to art school. You want to say a word or two, and then we'll play
this back and see what we're getting.
Oldfield: You mean like "testing," something like that?
DuCasse: Yes. Just so we know we've heard your voice. {brief tape interruption]
Okay, if you want to start in once more about that family matter —
Oldfield: About my father's objections to my studying art. They were really
very valid objections, and there was a reason behind them. He had
had a younger brother who had married a woman who claimed to be an
artist. There was a little doubt about this in the minds of some
of the family members, because they usually referred to her in an
uncomplimentary way as "artistic."
Anyway, she had married my father's younger brother and gone
to live with him in Nevada City, where he and another man had a
mining claim. My uncle worked as a night watchman in one of the
158
Oldfield: big stamp mills up there. His partner in the mining claim boarded
in their house.
One night my uncle came home from his job, for which he carried a
gun, and found the other man there with his wife. He opened the
door, and they shot each other. It was one of those traditional
stories of a triangle, I guess, although I had no knowledge of that
at the time. I have heard remarks since, when I've been a little
older, which lead me to believe that there was a problem there, and
that this tragedy had a very strong effect on my father.
This is the reason that he felt that women who studied art
came to no good ends . Anyway —
DuCasse: You mentioned a funeral — something else that happened.
Oldfield: Oh, yes. There was a funeral in Nevada City to which my father and
his sister went. They reported — although I wasn't present at the
funeral; I remember hearing this story told many, many times —
about the grieving widow standing between the two coffins and
crying for her two darlings. Naturally, this didn't have a very
good effect on the relatives of one of the dead men.
There was another reason that my father was dubious about the
wisdom of letting me study art. His cousin, with whom he had been
domiciled in their youth by their mutual grandmother, who was my
great-grandmother, of course, was Jimmy Swinnerton, who -later acquired
quite a reputation, and had been conspicuous in the art world.
I don't know when — I guess — would it be late nineteenth century,
or early twentieth century?
159
DuCasse: Probably early twentieth.
Oldfield: Anyway, Marty told me he knew him, too.
DuCasse: Yes, he did. I remember hearing him speak of him.
Oldfield: Swinnerton had been notorious. I remember once I spoke to him on
the phone and told him — I had never met him, and I wanted to contact
him. So I wrote him a note and he called me. I told him who I was,
and he said, "It looks as though even my family has forgiven me."
But his reputation was distasteful to my father, who was a
gentle, idealistic person. This was another reason that he felt
that he didn't want me to be associated with the arts. So he was
unwilling to finance my first year at art school until after I had
agreed to go to Stanford as a math major. That had fallen through
because of his financial problems. He could not finance me for
the first year, so I never went to Stanford at all. Instead, I
stayed at home and took care of the household during my mother's
illness. After about two years of that, he decided that I had earned
the right to do what I wanted and allowed me my first choice. So
he financed me for at least my first year at Arts and Crafts. And
the rest of that is on the tape.
DuCasse: That's wonderful, so that we just have amplified. And that brought
in Jimmy Swinnerton, which we didn't have the first time around.
Okay, we'll just stop this, and then what we'll do — [tape interruption]
DuCasse: Okay, now we're going to be recording. Now you can start talking
about Kenneth Rexroth.
160
Oldfield: I really don't have very much to say, and I thought it was already
on the tape. All I had in mind to say was that I was visiting up
there at the tower when this organizing was going on. Otis was
being difficult; he wasn't going along with their ideas. So what
has stuck in my memory is that Rexroth turned to him and said, "The
trouble with you, Oldfield, is that you're an anarchist." [laughter]
DuCasse: What did Otis have to say to that?
Oldfield: Well, he said it was true. [laughter] He said it was true, but
it didn't make him a good candidate for being organized. I think
they just went their separate ways.
Well, wait a minute. There's a card around here somewhere — he
was a member of the guild or artists' union, local whatever it was.
There was such a thing formed. Somewhere or other, I have Otis'
membership card. But it didn't last very long. When it came time
to pay the dues, the artists didn't do it. [laughs] So that was
the end of that. I don't remember too clearly about it.
But there were a lot of things that went on that discouraged
Otis from doing the things that people wanted him to do to be
enterprising. I remember there was one occasion when Otis was
involved in a scheme or an arrangement — I don't know that it was a
scheme — with Ray Bertrand to produce lithographs. They hired a
young man to represent them, to peddle the lithographs, for which
he was to get a small percentage of the purchase price. Otis made
several lithos. The peddler — I can't remember his name — was supplied
with several prints from each artist, and he absconded with them.
161
Oldfield: So this was another attempt to be financially sophisticated and
enterprising which backfired, because he just lost his work.
This sort of thing happens to artists all the time. It's not
only Otis; I know it happens to others too.
DuCasse: Yes, unfortunately, it has.
Cravath: I think this is the time to bring you up to date on this Alexander
business.
Oldfield: Oh, yes, I'm interested.
Cravath: Did I talk to you about it?
DuCasse: I don't think you did. Did you want this on the tape?
Cravath: Oh, no.
DuCasse: Okay, we'll stop this then.
[end tape 6, side B]
162
CONCLUSION
Helen Oldfield remained in a convalescent hospital for the last months
of her life. She rallied at one point — but this rally was not sustained.
Ruth Cravath and I had two visits with her during September, to show her
the transcript and to get answers to a few questions that had arisen between
the taping session and the typing of the transcript. She was pleased to see
it "in black and white," and enjoyed having parts of it read to her. We are
most grateful for her daughter Jayne's help in proofreading the transcript
for any errors or additions she would notice.
Helen's continued weakness was a great concern to us all, but in a special
way for Ruth and I, as we had so hoped she could see the final stage, in
printed form, which would have been such a great satisfaction to her as well
as to us for her. But it was not to be. On November 16, 1981, Helen passed
away peacefully. She has joined Otis and the many friends who preceeded her
into the next world.
Her devoted daughter, Jayne Blatchly; arranged an intimate ceremony of
remembrance for Helen in Jayne's home on Tuesday, November 24, 1981. Among
the San Francisco art colony friends who shared with the family a touching
and most suitable remembrance of Helen were: Antonio and Grace Sotomayor,
Ruth Cravath Wakefield, Mireille Piazzoni Wood, Micaela Martinez DuCasse,
and Terry St. John of the art department staff of the Oakland Museum. It
was a communion of spirits, not sad, but so grateful for the friendship Helen
gave to each of us with such warmth and love.
Helen had always minimized her own significance as an artist because of
Otis being in the forefront all their life together. Helen was a good painter
in her own right, and kept up her own work after Otis died. An exhibition of
her painting, organized by Jayne, was held in November and December of 1981,
at the Laurel Heights Convalescent Hospital, where Helen had lived those last
months of her life. Several of her paintings were sold, a tribute to her own
ability as an artist.
We are grateful indeed that there was time to do the essential phase of
this oral history of Otis and Helen Oldfield while she was still with us.
It is a precious legacy, along with her own paintings, from Helen Clark Oldfield.
Last, but not at all least, we owe a special debt of gratitude to Walter
Nelson-Rees and James Goran, who, out of their great interest in, and knowledge
of, California art as collectors and scholars, gave generously the money to
have the tapes transcribed. Their contribution was most essential for the
ultimate completion of this worthy project.
Micaela Martinez DuCasse
Ruth Cravath Wakefield
January 1982
Piedmont, California
163
EPILOGUE
It is always hard to look back on a life that has been lived
before one's own eyes and judge its success. My mother, Helen
Oldfield, would be judged as "the best" by myself and anyone
who has ever known her. Not strangely, she would never give
herself such a rating. On reading this fascinating transcript,
I am able to see how important the artist's wife was to the
budding art community of her time. My own memory of mother goes
much farther. She supported and advanced a noted California
artist and developed her own strong talents as well. Though all
but a few of her last years were spent in practical areas (posing
for hundreds of hours for her husband and teaching art at the
Hamlin School), she never lost her drive to create visually. When
at last she had time to apply herself to her own art vork, she
developed a style so personal and distinctive, one wishes she had
had another life to give to it. In this area lies the crux of
divergence in success judging. From mother's viewpoint, she never
succeeded in "getting anything done". In my viewpoint, she
accomplished several lifetimes at once.
Because many facets of Helen's life were overshadowed by her
husband, I am deeply grateful the Oral History Transcript was
completed before she had a crippling stroke. Her last few months
were uplifted by the editing of this material with the help of
her oldest and dearest friends, as well as her first one-man show
at the nursing home where she spent her last days. (Exhibition
announcement next page).
On November 22, 1981, a final tribute to Helen was held at my home
for her closest friends. Participants included Ruth Cravath and
Mirelle Piazzoni Wood, who were present at Helen's wedding to Otis
Oldfield fifty five years ago. The highlight of the ceremony was
"A Song For Helen"; the Brahams Lullaby sung in German, accompanied
on the lute. Memories mixed with tears as we added a pinch of
ashes to the urn, knowing Helen had been with us in spirit. The
urn will be placed at the Neptune Society's Columbarium in San
Francisco to welcome all pilgrims.
Jayne (Oldfield) Blatchly
January 15, 1982
163a
Helen
Helen Regina Clark was born in Santa Rosa,
in 1902.
After graduation from High School, Helen
attended the College of Arts and Crafts in
Oakland, from 1922 to 1924.
In 1925, Helen met the internationally
famous artist, Otis Oldfield while attending
his classes at the California School of
Fine Arts in San Francisco. Helen married
Otis Oldfield in 1926 and had two daughters
shortly thereafter.
Helen lired on Telegraph Hill and Russian
Hill with her family during the start of her
teaching career at the Sarah Dix Ham 1 in
School, where she headed the Art Department.
She taught at the Hamlin School from 1946
to 1968.
The Oldfields moved to a small house on
Joost Avenue in 1960 and there, after the
death of her husband, Helen began her own
separate artistic career.
Helen showed her work regularly at the
Godfrey Gallery in the Mark Hopkins Hotel;
the Arts and Crafts Co-op in Berkeley and
the Sonoma Valley Arts Center. She had
her greatest success with the Valley Art
Gallery in Walnut Creek where she rented
and sold her work on a continuing basis
from 1972 to 1980.
Helen was an active member of the Artists
Equity Association's local chapter, working
on projects for artists with her friends
in the area.
The pictures shown here through January
first, 1982, are a sample of the work
Helen has done from 1940 to 1980.
Each picture is an original oil painting
on a standard size canvas board. The
smaller size works sell for $50.00 each
and the larger works sell for $75.00.
These pictures are easy and inexpensive
to frame at home with ready made frames
and make colorful additions to any room.
Make checks payable directly to Helen
Oldfield and indicate at bottom of check
painting number marked on the back of
each work for sales identification.
We, the staff and Helen's family, hope you
like these pictures and find they add
brightness to your holiday visits to
Laurel Heights Convalescent Hospital.
PAINTINGS
LAUREL HEIGHTS CONVALESCENT HOSPITAL 2740 CALIFORNIA ST. SAN FRANCISCO, CA. 94115
164
INDEX — Helen Oldfield
Alaska, 76,81,83,8?
Alaska Commercial Co ., 82
Alaska Journals, 72
Albright, Gertrude, 80
Allenson, Bertram, 80
Alta, Oldfield summer home, 155
Anchorage, 83
Archipenko, Madame, Il6
Arnautoff, Victor, 1^-8, 151
Art Association, 151
Artists Council, L5I
Artists Equity, 151
Artists Guild, 151
Beaux Arts Gallery, 6l, 70, 80
Bellows, George, 15^
Bering Sea, 82
Bertrand,Ray, 160
Best Academy, 52, 136
Best, Arthur, 52,136
Best, Virginia, 52
Bigin's Restaurant, 116
Birge, Lydia, Otis' mother's name,
the Blendings, 22
Boat .The Louise. for trip to Alaska, 82
Broadwell,Edith,6
Boynton ,Ray , 35 » 1^8
Bufano, Benny, 9,13,21,96
Bureau, Noel, 66-68
Bureau Of Fisheries, 83
165
California College of Arts And Crafts, 6,7,8,9,38, ?I, 89, o4, 95, 128,
138,140,159
California School Of Fine Arts, 9,12,62,63,89,136,142
Canon Kip Mission, 35,35
Charles Campbell Gallery, 128
Clark, Edgar, brother of Helen Qldfield, 86
Clark, Ruth, sister of Helen OLdfield, 8?
Coit Tower, ?6
Colt Press, 73, 74
Coppa's Restaurant, Il6
Covarrubias , Miguel , 147
Cowell, Henry, 118,119
Cravath,Ruth, 44, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104
Crocker Art Gallery, 129
Cuneo, Ethel, 122
Cuneo, Rinaldo, 112, Il4, 115, 122, 123
Dahl,Bill, 149
Dean, Mallette, 74
Dear, Ellen, 29
Del Pino, Helen(Horst) , 19, 123, 126, 127
Del Pino, Moya, 123, 124, 125, anecdote of copy of Goya painted by
Moya,I26-l49
De Young Museum, 93
Diebenkorn, 131
Dixon, Maynard, 43, 6l, 64, 115, 116, 117, 128
Dover, Scooner, 78
Duff, Lucille, 45
Ducasse, Micaela M. , 2
Dunham, Pranck, 23
Farm, Santa Rosa, 8l
Fort Mason, 89, 9!
Francis, Sam, 132
166
Gee, Helena 32, 145
Gee, Yun, 30, 31, 32, 144
Gerstle, Bill, 82, 84, Il6
Gold Run.Oldfield summer home, 155
Grabhorn , Ed , 75 , 76
Grabhorn, Jane, 73, 7^, 81
Grabhorn Press, 75, 81
Hamilton, Leah, 9^
Hamlin.E^ith, 117
Hamlin School, 75, 87, 106, 140
Haug, Eddie, J6
Horst, Helen, (Del Pino), 19,123, 126, 127
Jayne, (Blatchly) , daughter of H.& O.Oldfield, 129
Joost Street Home,I07-IIO
Juneau , 83
Justema, Billy, 145
Kandinsky, 134
Kipling, Rudyard, 75
Kuhn, Walt, 17, 77
Labaudt Gallery, 129
Labaudt, Lucien, 17, 119, 120, 128, killed in Burma, 120, I2i
Lange, Dorothea ,28, 29, 117
Leaves Of Grass. 74
Legion Of Honor Museum, 76
Leibes, Dorothy, 93
Leonardo (DaVinci ), 66
Macbeth Galleries, 79
Macky, Spencer, 21, 22, 43, 95, 96, 97
Martinez, Elsie, 2
Mar tine z.Xavier, 2, 7, 9, 12, 14, 19,20,21,22,43,55,71,79, 130,132, 133,
134,135, 154,159
167
McTeague.by Frank Norris, 72-87
Massingill, Floyd and Shirley, 138
Matthews, Arthur, 136
Matisse, Henri , I4l
Mil jarick, Louis, 18
Meyer, Frederick H. , 16, 18,94,95
Mey$r , Letitia, (Mrs . Frederick ) , I? , 18 , ?I
Meyer , Letitia(Babs ) , I?
Modern Gallery, 70
Montague, Ward, 13
Montrose Gallery, 77
Moore Ship Yards, 89
Nevada City, 157, 158
Novelty Sign Co., II, 12
Oakland Museum, 144, 145, 146
Officer, Mr. .Instructor at C.C.A.C.,15
Ohloff, Henry, 29, 30, 43
Oldfield.Jayne, 129
Oldfield, Helen, (Clark) , Birth, I, "birthplace, 8?, Earthquake, I, Father em-
grates from England, I, grandmother's death, 3, family moves after earth
quake, 3, public schooling, 3, 4, 5, Arts and Crafts, 6, Novelty Sign Co, first
job, II, 12, maiden name, 12, Otis 'courtship, 25, 26, 27, marriage, 27, Ceremony, 35,
early married life, 3 7, taught at Hamlin School, 87, Volunteer wook during
WWII for Red Cross, 92-93, Nursery School Helen and Ruth Cravath had to
gether, 98-104, Helen's illness, 107,108, move to the home on Joost Street,
I07-IIO, about her father's objections to her studying art, 157
Oldfield. Otis. 9, 12 ,14,18—25, 29 ,30, Paris clothes, 32, 33, 34,39, Otis 'atti
tude towards his children, 42 -43, bookbinding, 44, Parents ,46-47, grand
parents, 48-49, birth, 47, schooling in Sacramento, 49, works as cook on cattle
ranch, 50, at Argonaut Hotel, 51, Leaves for France, 52, Paris, 54-56, Courtship
of Helen, 57, Parillia Ball, 57, 58, Learned bookbinding, 64, 65, attempts at
168
curing human skin for use in bookbinding, 67-69, home on Telegraph Hill,?!.
?6, New York Exhibition, 77, Sacramento River Trip on Scooner Dover, ?8,
trip for Union Fish Co to Alaska, 80-86, Worked at Moore Ship Yards as a
draughtsman during WWII,89-9Qthe way Otis worked, 87-89, studio on RUssion
Hill, 97, move from Telegragh Hill, 98, Rents room in Monkey Block, 104, ar
ranges studio in home on Russian Hill, 105, Otis' interest in fresco tech
nique, Il6, 131, not an abstractionist, 132, as teacher , 152, date of his
death, 86.
Oliviera, Mona, 128
Oliviera , Nathan, 128 , 130
Orozco,Jose Clemente,l4?-48,
Owens Valley, 40
Palmer , Julius , 23
Parillia Art Ball, 57
Pearl Harbor, 73
Perun, Steve, 138
Piazzoni , Gottardo , 6l , III
Picasso, I^-I
Poole, Nelson, 119, 122
Poulanc,II9,i22, 128
Pribiloff Islands, 82
Randolph, Lee, 96
Rawlings,Miss, ?
Red Bluff, ?8
Red Cross .Bulletin of, 92,93
Renoir, I4l
Rexroth, Kenneth, I5I,I59,I60
Rhoda, daughter of H.& 0. Oldfield, 102
Rivera , Di ego , 1^2 , 1^? , 148
Rivera, Prida,
Robinson, Jim,
Roche, Madame, 65.
Roche, Marcel, 65
Roosevelt , President ,
169
Rose, Stanley ,69
Roth, Bill, 73, 74
Ryan, Beatrice , 24 , 28
Sacramento trip, 78
Salinger, Pierre, 28,29,30,32,36
SanFRancisco Call ,152 ,153
SanFRancisco City College, 146
SanFRancisco Museum, 93
Seward,83,84
Sister Leonard, 106
Smith, Mass el, 131
St. John, Terry, 156
St. Mary The Virgin, Church of, 29
St. Rose School, 106
Stackpole.Adele, 6l
S tackpole , Jeannette , 6i , 114, 115
Stackpole, Ralph, 28, 29, 60, III, 113, 114,136, 137, 143, 148
Stock Exchange Club,80,l42
S winnert on , James , ( Jimmy ) , 158 , 159
Taylor, Paul, 117
Treasure Island, 146
Union F^sh Co. ,80
Ureska,59
Von Stroheim.ERic, 66
Wacs,9I
Wakefield,Beth, 44
Wakefi eld, Ruth Cravath,her grandchildren, 44; see also,Cravath,Ruth
West, Isabel , 12 , 136, 137
White, Clifford, 19
Wirtenberger , Carol , 19 , 28 , 64 , 124
Wright , S . McDonald , 145
Ruth Cravath
Born in Chicago in 1902, and educated at the Chicago Art
Insitute. Studied at the California School of Fine Arts
in the 1920s, where she was a student of Ralph Stackpole's.
Well-known sculptor and teacher.
Charter member of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists,
and long a member of the San Francisco Art Commission.
Her work is in private and public collections. Notable
public works include the Starr King statue recently
reinstalled at the First Unitarian Church, San Francisco;
the "Timeless Family," IBM, San Jose; and the Saint Francis
at Candlestick Park, San Francisco.
Micaela Martinez DuCasse
Daughter of Xavier Martinez and Elsie Whi taker Martinez.
Educated under her father at California College of Arts
and Crafts, 1928-31.
Studied fresco painting with Victor Arnautoff in 1938,
and sculpture with Ralph Stackpole in 1938-9, at San
Francisco Art Institute.
Liturgical mural commission in 1939 at St. Boniface Church,
San Francisco. Career in liturgical arts through mid-1950s.
Founding member, Catholic Art Forum of San Francisco.
Member, art department faculty, Lone Mountain College;
chairman, 1955-78.
Organized a survey course in history of California art,
as a preview to the opening of the Oakland Museum in
September of 1969. The research and knowledge obtained in
preparing this course was background for the oral history
interviewing of Helen Clark Oldfield.
1 16520
- <