[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

LOCKHART, Isobel Anne (1867-1910)

“Fishing: Crispin Creek”

ca 1909 / unsigned

oil on canvas / 15.4 inches x 19.3 inches

This simple impressionist work by Isobel Lockhart likely dates from the summer of 1909. Miss Lockhart’s origins are uncertain but she taught at Agincourt’s Charles Darwin public school from 1898 until her death on 21 March 1910, one of forty-five victims on the Green Mountain train wreck, Iowa’s most notorious rail disaster.

Adjunct to her career as a primary school teacher, Miss Lockhart was an amateur artist and reflective, we believe, of her educational perspectives. She eventually shared a home with her contemporary and fellow teacher Miss Rose Kavana(ugh). Kavana inherited the piece, which then passed to Howard Tabor, then to Rowan Oakes, from whom it came to the Community Collection. The identity of the angler isn’t recorded.

Shards of non-verbal material culture left behind, with intention or not, tell our children more about us than our words may. Sketches on the margin of a contract; doodles around the edge of a valentine; these can reveal more of what is in our minds, as well as what’s on them. So, examining Isobel’s “Fishing: Crispin Creek” as a work of art may be a disappointment: regardless of her skills in composition, color or rendition — which are worthy — we don’t know if her work was ever shown to the public, let alone be available for purchase. At best they may have become gifts to family and close friends who understand not all messages are written. Also that many cannot be.

So, what meanings attached to this visual delight by its sequence of ownership?

There is a label, handwritten, on the back of the canvas stretcher: “From Annie Isabault to Rose / Christmas 1909”