Edge of the Forest
- Material
- Oil on canvas
Charlotte Buell Coman, American, 1833–1924; Edge of the Forest (detail), c.1880s; oil on canvas; 27 1/2 x 30 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, James D. Burke Art Acquisition Fund 118:2024
Charlotte Buell Coman began her life following a traditional path for a woman of her time. Born in 1833, she grew up in Waterville, New York, living there until she married and moved to Iowa City with her husband in the 1850s. Seven years later, she would experience a series of life-altering events, setting her on a vastly different path.
Her husband died in the Civil War, and she moved back East. Around the same time, Coman lost her hearing and became Deaf from unknown causes. When a widowed Coman, who had also recently lost her mother, was faced with the prospect of a life unlike what she had expected, she made decisions to secure her future and her happiness. In a 1915 interview with Coman for the New York Press, Mary W. Wakins wrote: “With characteristic courage Mrs. Coman faced her future . . . she determined that she would never become depressed; that she would enjoy to the full all that was beautiful, good and fine in this life.”
Helen Watson Phelps, American, 1864--1944; Charlotte Buell Coman, 1910; oil on canvas, affixed to masonite panel; 30 x 25 inches; National Academy of Design 94-P
After drastic changes to her life, the loss of her sense of hearing, and finding a new way of communicating with others, Coman focused on what she could see, turning to art. She bought paints and brushes for herself, but she was not serious about her art for several years. Eventually, she went to Paris to study, over a series of two extended periods, learning from the Barbizon school of painters before returning to New York to become a landscape artist. It was during this period that she painted Edge of the Forest, which entered SLAM’s collection in 2024. Though she studied in France, she is considered an American Impressionist as she spent the bulk of her career in the United States.
Before Coman, no known Deaf or hard-of-hearing female artists exhibited their art in American galleries and museums. Coman is considered the first, and in 1904, four of her works hung in the Palace of Fine Arts at the St. Louis World’s Fair: oil paintings The Brook and Burning Brush, and A Hillside and Early Spring in the category of watercolors and pastels.
Charlotte Buell Coman, American, 1833–1924; Edge of the Forest, c.1880s; oil on canvas; 27 1/2 x 30 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, James D. Burke Art Acquisition Fund 118:2024
Coman’s decision to focus on the beauty and joy of life seems to have worked. She used her own method of communication. She would speak aloud, as she had been accustomed to all her life, and her conversation partner would write questions or comments on a pad of paper for her to read. This allowed her to converse with any number of people, but the process was much slower than the pace of spoken or signed conversation. Coman outwardly expressed good spirits, even about her change in abilities, quoted in the book Deaf Artists in America by Deborah M. Sonnenstrahl: “Everything in life has its compensations, even my deafness. Critics never make such caustic criticisms through an ear trumpet [an early assistive hearing device] as they do in ordinary conversation.”
As she advanced in years, she lived and worked in her apartment studio, receiving guests and painting in the same space. She herself noted: “But it was not until I was 40 that I actually became devoted to painting . . . since then, I have never stopped painting, and I never shall.” She was right in her prediction; she was still actively painting and giving interviews at age 89—before her death at 91—focusing on beauty and creating works with skills she had honed over decades.
Edge of the Forest is on view in Gallery 336.
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