ELIZA ROSANNA LAMB BARCHUS (1857 - 1959) 

Unfortunately, not much is known about Eliza’s early life.  According to the book Eliza R. Barchus: The Oregon Artist (Binford & Mont, 1974, by Agnes Barchus), she was born in Salt Lake City, Utah on December 4, 1857.  Her father died while she was still a young child and when her mother remarried they moved to Abiline, Kansas. This move appeared to be only temporary, as the family moved from town to town in search of work. At the age of seventeen, Eliza Lamb married John V. Lansing. Two children were born from this union prior to its disolution. Eliza remarried to John Hedges Barchus and they relocated to Portland, Oregon in 1880. It is not known exactly when or where they married. Eliza Barchus was twenty-two when she arrived in what would become her adopted home for the remainder of her 102 year life.

It is also not known why Portland was chosen to begin their life together. It could have been because of favorable job prospects or just the lure of the west.  However, this may have been the first time in Eliza’s life where she felt that she could put down roots. It also brought out her interest in becoming an artist. In 1884 she took her first, and apparently only, painting lessons. She chose to study under William S. Parrott, a leading artist of the area at the time. She most assuredly selected Parrott as her instructor because she admired his work. Early Barchus paintings have a very similar look to his, and even as Eliza’s painting style matured she never strayed too far from his representation of nature.

Eliza had a strong natural ability to paint. She almost immediately began her career as a professional artist, a career that would ultimately span 50 years. The earliest exhibition record of her work is at the Seventh Annual Portland Mechanics Exposition in 1885. In this exhibition the judges awarded her “best landscape in oil painting.” The painting, not located, was called “Columbia.” Her entries at the Ninth Annual Mechanics Fair in 1887 earned a gold medal, followed with a silver medal at the Tenth, and final, Portland Mechanics Fair.  

At this same time, Eliza was confident in her skills and was offering painting lessons to students by 1886.  A brief mention in The Oregonian, the prominent newspaper of Portland, indicates that her fee was 50 cents per lesson. She arranged painting classes at many small communities in Oregon and Washington for several years prior to 1900.

With back-to-back medal honors, and local encouragement, Barchus decided to exhibit at the National Academy of Design’s 9th Annual Winter Exhibition (1890).  She travelled to New York with her selected entry that well represented her adopted state - “Mt Hood.” Thus, at thirty-two years of age, Eliza Barchus was exhibiting at one of America’s greatest artist venues. Several years later, in 1898, she submitted ”Mt Langley, Cal” at the National Academy’s 17th Annual Winter Exhibition.

While her art career was developing, her family was growing. By 1893 two additional children - Harold and Agnes - had been born. There was also one child - Belle - from her first marriage and Eliza’s mother in the household. The Barchus family decided to build their first home. This would be the first of six homes that Barchus would have built. Construction costs were often paid for by barter - her paintings traded for labor and materials.  Four of the six homes still stand in what is now inner SE Portland (see images of most of these homes in the Ephemera Index).

In 1898, John Barchus died. Supporting the family now fell solely on Eliza’s artistic abilities.  But Barchus was now in the peak of her career and well established. Her tourist trade sales were no doubt doing well and she had dealers in various cities handling her work (Lichtenberger’s Art Emporium in Los Angeles, Schweigart’s Art Store in Tacoma and B. B. Rich Cigars in Portland, for example). An undated press clipping from the Los Angeles Times substanciates the significant sales she was making in that city: “Many of the artistic designs and handiwork of Mrs. Barchus adorn and decorate quite a number of the parlors of Angelenos.”  

The following year she exhibited at the Oregon Industrial Exhibition and received favorable press: “the piece de resistance of this part of the exhibit is the great oil painting of Mirror Lake, Nevada, by Mrs. J. H. Barchus.” The critic goes on to say that “The whole picture is full of atmosphere, and in this, as well as in the other pieces of canvas that hang on the walls bearing her signature, one cannot fail to observe the perfect harmony of color between water and sky, the one always faithfully reflecting the other as in nature.” Yes, Eliza was in the peak of her artistic career.

Like other artists, she had popular subjects which necessitated painting replacements when the previous ones sold.  One frequently finds affixed to the reverse of her smaller works completed on panel, a studio advertising label that offers her standard subjects - “Mt. Hood,” “Mt. Rainier,” “Mt. Shasta,” “Multnomah Falls” and “Rooster Rock” - at set prices for given standard sizes. At some point, she began to execute multiple paintings of essentially identical composition simultaneously. (An 1890’s photograph, illustrated in the Ephemera Index, shows Barchus at her easel working on two “Mt. Shasta” paintings that are in the same state of completion.)  It is believed that at the peak of her career, she was producing ten or more paintings in  assembly line fashion - pot boilers - to maintain sufficient painting inventory. 

Eliza was one of Portland’s leading painters when it hosted the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition. Always an enterprising business woman, she purchased a booth in one of the fairground buildings. Anticipating that not all fair visitors could afford an original painting, she arranged to have color lithographs made from three of her most popular scenes - Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainier and Crater Lake.  These she sold at the not so nominal price of 40 - 50 cents each.  For promotion during the fair, she also created a small brochure entitled Picturesque Oregon - As Portrayed on Canvas by an Oregon Artist. This 16 page brochure was beautifully produced and given free to those that visited her booth. Painting sales were good. But more important, the Fair brought Eliza additional recognition. Upon conclusion of the Fair, she was awarded a gold medal for her oil paintings of Pacific coast scenery. 

Sales during the early 1900’s were not only sufficient to support her family, it also enabled a certain amount of travel which she did unaccompanied. In 1901 she visited and painted Yellowstone.  It is likely she visited Glacier, which had not yet received National Park status, this same year.  In 1913 she took a steamer to Skagway, Alaska, staying at the Golden North Hotel. Just before returning on the steamer Spokane, Eliza wrote to her daughter stating that she had sent $160 by postal order, likely indicating her sales during the visit.  The following year she traveled to Yosemite, camping (at the age of 56) at Camp Lost Arrow in a tent. (Camp Lost Arrow no longer exists. It was permanently closed in 1915, the year after Barchus’ visit, when the Yosemite Lodge was completed and opened.)

While each of these travels created a spurt of interest to paint the scenic beauty she found, Barchus only painted Yosemite for a sustained period of time, and this actually commenced years prior to the park visit, and undoubtedly due to her established California market sales. A studio price list from about 1892, more than 20 years prior to her Yosemite trip, offered “Sentinel Rock” and “Three Brothers” as scenes available for purchase.

Whether due to the demands to execute paintings for sale, her responsibilities for rearing children or lack of interest, it does not appear that Eliza engaged significantly with her fellow art community. William Parrott, Cleveland Rockwell and James Everett Stuart, all landscape painters like herself, were contemporaries with Portland addresses at some time during her career, but no documented interaction has come to light. And while Portland saw several art organizations spring up during the years she was active, Barchus appears to have participated in only one - the Mutual Art Association. Unfortunately, this organization was short lived (approximately 1913 - 1915) and left little record. We are left to ponder why such a successful artist chose to avoid the local arts organizations.   

The last significant exhibition of Barchus works while she was still actively painting was held in 1931 at the Merchants Exposition in Portland. This one-person show, arranged by the artist herself, and comprised of the artist’s favorite not-for-sale paintings, was not a juried exhibition but intended to stimulate sales during the current economic depression. Extant photographs of the paintings taken during the exhibition provide identification that many of those paintings remained in the family until Agnes sold much of the family collection to an East coast collector in the early 1970’s.  

By 1930, Eliza was in her 70s. Her eyesight was failing and arthritis progressively restricted movement. Her painting suffered. By the mid 1930’s she recognized that her career had come to an end. Fortunately, a large quantity of her paintings remained unsold and they provided a source of income for years after the artist had put away her paint and brushes. On December 31, 1959, after just reaching the age of 102, Eliza passed away from pneumonia.

Like many artists, the popularity of Eliza’s paintings went through a period of neglect, or at least disinterest. This may have been a result of the aforementioned “cashe” of paintings still held by Agnes which she continued selling to provide income. The unknown quantity, but considered to be an endless supply,  kept prices low. This was despite continued effort by Agnes to keep her mother’s work in the public’s eye, including recognition by the Legislator of the State of Oregon that bestowed Eliza Barchus as “The Oregon Artist.” Unfortunately, it was not until after Agnes sold most of the remaining family collection in the 1970’s to a single out-of-state collector that the public began to take note.  Over the last thirty years interest in Barchus’ works have been steadily receiving more interest and their values increasing. Her works justifiably are becoming recognized as a significant legacy to Oregon’s early art history.