Montgomery Mediums

To further enhance our Art Camp experience this summer, Museum staff carefully selected works from our permanent collections for our campers to see as examples and inspiration. We are delighted to share works from Charlotte Baker Montgomery that show her expertise in a variety of mediums. The following pieces are on display in our hallway for visitors and campers alike to enjoy and the works present a wonderful taste of life in Kilgore 90 years ago. These works were created between 1931 and 1937 and beautifully depict many aspects of living in an oil town during the Great Depression. Information about Charlotte Baker Montgomery as well as a sampling of works in various mediums is below. We hope you'll come see them in person soon!

Mrs. Montgomery, artist, author, poet, teacher, naturalist and humanitarian, was born August 31, 1910, in Nacogdoches, Texas. She was the daughter of Thomas Ellis and Karle Wilson Baker. She attended Stephen F. Austin State University and graduated from Mills College in Oakland, California, in 1929. She obtained a master of arts degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1930. She taught art in public schools and at the university level. She married Roger Montgomery, an attorney, in 1942. From 1945 to 1950, she was acting director of the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. In 1950 she returned to Nacogdoches and became a full-time writer-illustrator. She published 21 books for animal lovers and children, numerous short stories, poems, instructional articles and play adaptations, and she illustrated many of her own books and three books written by her mother, Karle Wilson Baker. In 1959, Mrs. Montgomery, her husband, Roger, and Winifred Hall organized the Humane Society of Nacogdoches County. Participating in the worldwide movement for the humane treatment of animals, Mrs. Montgomery received many awards, including the Krutch Medal of the Humane Society of the United States, in 1983. For 36 years, she was active in promoting humane education through her newspaper column "Noah's Notebook" in The Daily Sentinel. She endowed a professorship of humane and environmental education at SFASU. She was inducted into the Nacogdoches Women's Hall of Fame in 1996. She was a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, the Texas Ornithological Society and various environmental and animal rights organizations.

Charlotte Baker Montgomery

Drilling Well at Night, 1937

Oil pastel

5.5 x 10 inches

Charlotte Baker Montgomery

Carnival in Kilgore

Watercolor

8.25 x 11 inches

Charlotte Baker Montgomery

Happy Hollow, 1934

Colored pencil

8.25 x 10.75 inches

Charlotte Baker Montgomery

Derrick at Night, 1934

Oil on board

7 x 12 inches

Charlotte Baker Montgomery

Drilling Well, 1935

Pen and ink

5.5 x 10 inches

Charlotte Baker Montgomery

Longview Highway, Night, Kilgore, 1933

Wax crayon

8.25 x 9.5 inches

We hope that you'll find time to come and see these works from our permanent collection as you visit us this summer and we look forward to the response of our students, as well.