Photo courtesy of the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center
Fine art watercolors by pioneer artist Emogene Wells come to light.
Randy Lewis made an important discovery in the art world
last month when Linda Melvin delivered five watercolor paintings to his
art shop in Seattle: two landscapes and three still-life watercolors of
ceramic plates. The early 20th century paintings and the artist, E.
Wells, were unknown in the art world.
Linda had found the paintings decades ago at her Aunt
Doris’ home in California. At the time of her aunt’s death, Linda was
the conservator of the estate and a working mother of two children. The
paintings were tucked away and moved with Linda to Seattle. Recently,
she rediscovered the paintings and decided to have them framed.
Linda’s sister Susan and brother Robert pieced together
the likely route of the paintings. Their father, Gordon Sanderson,
worked for A.Z. Wells in Wenatchee during the 1920s and ’30s. Robert
worked for A.Z.’s wife, Emogene Wells, as her personal driver. Emogene
gave the paintings to Linda’s parents. When they passed away, Gordon’s
sister Doris took the paintings to California, and then passed them on
to Linda.
Randy Lewis’ family history is also intertwined with the Wells family.
Randy’s great-great-grandmother, Rose
Marie Chus-chutl, owned 640 acres along the Columbia River near the
Methow Valley. She acquired the land when Chief Moses negotiated
individual land allotments for Native Americans as a compromise to the
elimination of the Moses Reservation in 1878. Rose-Marie chose the
location to preserve the generations of history that were carved into
the landscape.
In the early 1900s, Rose Marie verbally agreed to sell 10
acres to A.Z. Unable to read, she trusted A.Z. and signed the written
bill of sale. Soon thereafter, workers broke ground on 150 acres,
instead of the 10 acres she had thought she sold. A.Z. erected his
company town of Azwell and commercial orchards on Rose Marie’s land.
When Rose Marie passed away, her grandson Jerome Miller,
Randy’s grandfather, inherited the land. In the 1960s, the Douglas and
Chelan County public utility districts began building a dam above Azwell
without communicating with Jerome. Behind the newly erected Wells dam,
the rising waters of the mighty Columbia River swallowed the homes of
Randy’s family. After decades of compromise to keep their heritage
intact, it was all under water. For Rose-Marie’s descendants, it was
another betrayal in the name of Wells. A.Z. Wells’ orchards and the town
of Azwell were untouched.
In the delicate brush strokes of the watercolors, Randy
Lewis recognized Tumwater Canyon and Icicle Creek near Leavenworth. He
asked Linda if he could research the artist and send copies to the
Wenatchee Valley Museum to verify the signature. The ceramic plates in
the painting matched the Wells estate plates on display at the museum.
“E. Wells” was Emogene.
For Randy, this discovery was a valuable
piece to an overall narrative: “Here is a fine accomplished artist in
the frontier rush. She was a woman who was ahead of her time and sadly
overlooked in 1904. My mother and grandfather told us our whole world is
a jigsaw puzzle. Everybody holds a piece. People don’t realize the
value of that piece until all the parts come together. Regardless of
what happened between our families years ago, our lives are intertwined.
To take a piece away diminishes our world, our lives.”
Linda Melvin and her family have agreed to give the original watercolors to the Wenatchee Valley Museum.
