John Tucker, a deacon at St. Paul Catholic Church and president of the Nora Houston Foundation, with Houston’s painting “Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me” (Photo by Jay Paul)
Children receiving First Communion at St. Joseph’s Church. People standing in the shade on Fourth Street on a sweltering summer day. An old woman sitting in a shadowed room.
The paintings show Richmond through the eyes of artist and activist Nora Houston. Her “insightful depictions of urban people and places provide an irreplaceable visual record of life in the early twentieth century,” as Houston’s biographer, Colleen Yoder, observes. But for 35 years, the paintings deteriorated in a storage room, while Houston was all but forgotten.
Now, a group of supporters has launched an effort to save them and honor the artist. The nonprofit Nora Houston Foundation aims to raise funds to restore the work and place a marker at Houston’s grave in Shockoe Hill Cemetery.
Nora Houston (pronounced HOW‑ston) was born in Richmond in 1883. Her uncle, James H. Dooley, was one of the wealthiest men in Virginia, a Catholic philanthropist and a patron of the arts; her aunt Alice Dooley was an ardent supporter of women’s suffrage and welfare. From these two, Houston gained an interest in art, a passion for activism, and the money and influence to pursue both.
While taking art lessons as a child, Houston met Adèle Clark, who would become her lifelong companion and “very intimate friend.” (Read Harry Kollatz’s 2011 piece on Clark, a formidable force in her own right.) Houston continued studying art with noted Richmonders such as sculptor Edward Valentine and then in New York City and Paris. When she returned to Richmond, she and Clark began teaching at the Art Club and opened their own studio.
Among their students was Theresa Pollak, founder of VCUarts and the godmother of Richmond’s art scene, who years later cited Clark and Houston’s influence. “When I was a child growing up in Richmond, there was no art gallery or museum, no art in the colleges, and no art school, except the Richmond Art Club, founded by Adèle Clark and her friend, Nora Houston,” Pollak wrote in 1973. (Houston was actually the director, not the founder of the club.)
In 1909, the pair began advocating women’s suffrage. Houston traveled the state drumming up support for the cause, and once, while she was speaking in Monroe Park, the crowd threw stones at her. Three times, the Virginia General Assembly rejected bills that would allow women to vote; at last, in 1920, women won suffrage nationwide.
But Houston and Clark weren’t inclined to rest. They knocked on doors throughout Jackson Ward, encouraging black women to vote and helping them register. They hosted meetings with black leaders at their studio, devising ways to get out the vote and protect black women at the polls.
Self-portrait, 1907, by Nora Houston (Photo by Jay Paul)
As Houston continued her activism and philanthropic work, she never stopped painting and exhibiting her work in Richmond and nationwide. In addition to pensive portraits and country landscapes, she painted many scenes of black life in Jackson Ward: children playing in “Fourth Street, Summer” and receiving their First Communion at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in “Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me.” St. Joseph’s, which stood on North First Street, was the first Catholic church in the South built to serve African-Americans.
Houston and Clark should not be considered merely regional artists, says Evie Terrono, professor of art history at Randolph-Macon College and a board member of the Nora Houston Foundation. They studied under important American painters, like Robert Henri, leader of the Ashcan School, and their work reflected the growing urban realism movement. Houston’s work includes “a spectacular, spectacular painting of a little boy, that is virtually like a Robert Henri painting,” Terrono says.
The pair also upheld the work of Richmond’s black artists. In the late 1930s, Houston, Clark and other women established the Craig House Art Center on Main and 22nd streets as a space for African-American artists to teach, create and show their work. “It created literally a center for black cultural life,” Terrono says, and “was a remarkable example of interracial cooperation prior to the 1950s.”
When Houston died in 1942, she left her paintings to Clark. Clark kept them for 30 years and then decided they ought to be displayed. Houston’s work hung at St. Paul’s Catholic School for a decade, then when the school merged to form All Saints, the paintings were given to St. Paul Catholic Church. For 35 years, they were kept in a spare room in the rectory, where a ceiling leak caused some water damage.
Four of 50 have now been restored, says John Tucker, a deacon at St. Paul’s and president of the Nora Houston Foundation. The Diocese of Richmond paid for the restoration of “Suffer the Little Children,” which it intends to display in 2020 in honor of the diocesan bicentennial. Richmond Conservation Studio, which has been performing the work, has given estimates ranging from $1,000 to $7,000 to repair each painting it has assessed so far.
“The long-term goal is to fulfill the wishes of Adèle Clark when she gave the paintings to St. Paul’s in 1972,” Tucker says. “And that is that the paintings be restored, displayed and enjoyed by the public.”
To raise money, the Nora Houston Foundation is offering prints of “Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me” for a donation of $100. To order a print, send a check to The Nora Houston Foundation, Inc., P.O. Box 15033, Richmond, VA 23226-0433. Find more information here.
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