In honor of the University of Mississippi Museum‘s 75th anniversary this year, the Ole Miss News Blog is featuring 75 different items from the museum’s archives of more than 20,000 objects.
Today’s featured item is Theora Hamblett’s aquamarine colored fluted dish, which is painted between two pieces of glass. Hamblett donated the piece to the University Museum.
Born in Paris, Mississippi, in 1895, Hamblett took up painting later in life. The museum’s website contains an interesting biography of the artist’s extraordinary life:
She grew up on a chicken farm, which became the subject of many of her paintings. During the early decades of the twentieth century she taught school, but by the 1930s she left teaching to take care of her ill mother. After the passing of her mother, Theora Hamblett moved to Oxford where she bought a 12-room house, where she rented rooms to college students and sewed to make money. In 1948, the University of Mississippi created the Department of Art. Soon after, at the age of 55, Theora Hamblett took a class in oil painting, which provided her with the skills to create a prodigious amount of art for the rest of her life. In addition to a few classes at the University of Mississippi, she took correspondence art courses from the Famous Artists School. In 1954, a New York gallery owner, Betty Parsons purchased one of her paintings that found its way into the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art.
Many of Theora Hamblett’s works concentrated on her childhood memories, especially of the chicken farm in Paris. In nearly all of her landscape paintings, she includes animals or people; because she believed those additions gave life to the paintings. She also painted many landscapes that featured children playing games. After an accident that broke her hip and required surgery in 1954, she began to paint her dreams and visions. Many of her visions showed religious scenes that she often painted in series to tell a story. She also painted a large number of biblical scenes. She sold very few of these paintings, as they were deeply personal and she believed a testament of her faith.
As part of the museum’s anniversary celebration, admission is free through Aug. 8, 2015. There will be a lot to see as the museum introduces several new exhibits and unveils a new major gift as well as the reinstallation of the David M. Robinson Collection of Greek and Roman antiquities.
To see a complete list of upcoming events and information on the new exhibitions, click here.
The University Museum is open to the public 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. The museum is closed Mondays and regular university holidays. Its facilities are handicapped-accessible. For assistance related to a disability, call 662-915-7084.