John Mahaffie

This entry is post 14 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

In the mid-late-1910s, Isabel Cooper was living in Greenwich Village and working at artistic odd jobs, looking for something different.ⁱ [For that part of her story, see: “Resisting the homely snout of commercialism“]

Chance led her to find her way to entirely new experiences. And her story carries a lesson: you don’t know whom you’ll meet who might deliver you opportunity, adventure, or love. People Isabel met socially and through her work led her to all of those. It pays, it seems, to go to parties.

Isabel Cooper (r) with Ruth Rose in British Guiana about 1922

Isabel Cooper (r) with Ruth Rose in British Guiana, about 1922

Isabel was an artist, raised well-off and well-educated by Victorian aunts on the Upper West Side of New York City. At 21, she set off to make her own way, and worked in different design and art jobs in the city. But by 25 she was living for months at a time in jungle camps, painting reptiles for the naturalist William Beebe’s scientific expeditions.

How did this happen? Isabel recalled “an odd assortment of men and women to be instruments of fate” in her memior she wrote when she was in her 80s. William Beebe is part of that chain of seven who led her to meet her future husband, Charles Mahaffie on Christmas Eve, 1924.

The memoir gives thumbnails about of these drivers of fate, but she does not name them. Here is the sequence. Some we can identify, and their names are here:

“A quaint little painter…who couldn’t paint” — likely Alon Bement, who taught at Columbia and led summer art institutes at Old Lyme, Connecticut. He also taught Georgia O’Keeffe.
“A flighty young woman with one blue and one brown eye,” whom she met in the summer art class.
“A visionary–a philosopher way ahead of her time, incomprehensible, whom I came to appreciate and understand as the years went on.”
A man “notable for one thing,” he introduced her to:
“A debonair character who seemed to have no special occupation or means of support
“A famous biologist, part scientist and park faker…” “Faker” is a strong word, but William Beebe was more adventurer than credentialed scientist.
Dorothy B. Putnam, “a festive lady who loved people, giving parties, and matchmaking.” Dorothy and her husband George P. Putnam introduced Isabel to Charles Mahaffie, who became her husband.

But first, Isabel had nine years of adventures in the tropics, living a life nearly unique for her times, let alone for young, single woman. Isabel met Beebe just as he was mounting the first his Department of Tropical Research scientific expeditions. Experienced with nature exploration, he knew the value of a gifted artist to his work.

Isabel knew of Beebe’s incredible knowledge of nature and was fascinated with his globe-spanning exploration. And “he was an enthusiast, and he cared nothing about money,”ⁱⁱSo he could help her move her are clear of excess commercialism.

Isabel had told an American Magazine interviewer, “You must be enthusiastic,” she says; “it’s the enthusiasts who do things.”ⁱⁱⁱ She saw that in Beebe, and surely he saw it in her.

Having met him, “one word led to another,” and Beebe hired Isabel to bring her skills along on his 1917 expedition to British Guiana. She ultimately traveled as scientific artist with Beebe on nine expeditions, including seven to British Guiana and two to the Galapagos. The adventures she had colored her interests and her art from then forward.

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ⁱ John Monk Saunders, “Jungle Creatures ‘Sit’ for Her in Their Own Back Yards,” American Magazine, February 1926, Vol. 101, p. 26.

ⁱⁱ John Monk Saunders, “Jungle Creatures ‘Sit’ for Her in Their Own Back Yards,” American Magazine, February 1926, Vol. 101, p. 26.

ⁱⁱⁱ John Monk Saunders, “Jungle Creatures ‘Sit’ for Her in Their Own Back Yards,” American Magazine, February 1926, Vol. 101, p. 26.

This entry is post 12 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

In the 1910s there was no training for scientific illustrators in New York, and Isabel Cooper didn’t know she was destined to do that kind of work. She loved art, and wanted to be an artist. Newly independent, she saw that she needed work that would satisfy her but also pay her a living.

Isabel had done a freshman year, 1909-1910, at Bryn Mawr College. By her account she was a lackadaisical student.ⁱ Those who knew her later saw a wide-ranging and powerful mind that could have taken her deep into almost any kind of scholarship. But art drew her most.

After freshman year, she returned to New York. She enrolled in Fine Arts at Columbia Teachers College, and began studies at the Art Students’ League, then and still an independent art school in Manhattan. And she found a mentor, taking summer classes with the painter Alon Bement at Lyme Connecticut.

In her training, she tracked close to the path of Georgia O’Keeffe, who also studied at Columbia, at the Art Students League, and with Alon Bement, all at about the same time.

Isabel gravitated toward design classes, and began to work in interior design, perhaps as a surer way to make a living. Paid and unpaid, she tried: drawing from life, rug and tapestry design, clay sculpture, pottery, metalwork, interior decoration, and stage costuming.ⁱⁱIt is unfortunate we don’t have any examples of Isabel’s craft or design work from this time. Somewhere rugs she designed may still survive.

Isabel was good at interior design. It’s likely she worked in the early 1910s for Anton Hellmann, who had a interior decoration practice and school at the Benedict Studios on Washington Square.ⁱⁱⁱ

But she found interior decorating too commercially demanding.^iv Then she tried costume design. She was good at that too, and creating distinct costumes and stage hangings, each time something unique, satisfied her. But then a theater manager, liking a particular costume she had done, demanded fifty more just like it. As she must have conveyed carefully to her interviewer, “commercialism continued to poke its homely snout into her artwork.^v”

Something was still not right. She was built for novelty and adventure, not commercial toil. In fact, later in her life, after she was married and didn’t need to support herself, she resisted selling paintings. In gallery shows, she’d price her work high to ward off buyers. Only a few paintings got away from her in shows, and she tried more than once to buy paintings back.

Once launched in her career as a scientific artist in 1917, Isabel looked back at these years as “going bleakly about my various occupations, such as assisting at the legerdemain of interior decorators, or degrading oriental perfections to terms of modern rug factory…^vi” She was ready for something more interesting.

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ⁱ Letter, Isabel Cooper to Charles D. Mahaffie, October 17, 1926.

ⁱⁱ John Monk Saunders, “Jungle Creatures ‘Sit’ for Her in Their Own Back Yards,” American Magazine, February 1926, Vol. 101, p. 26.

ⁱⁱⁱ The Upholsterer, June 1916, Vol. 55, p. 83.

^iv John Monk Saunders, “Jungle Creatures ‘Sit’ for Her in Their Own Back Yards,” American Magazine, February 1926, Vol. 101, p. 26.

^v John Monk Saunders, “Jungle Creatures ‘Sit’ for Her in Their Own Back Yards,” American Magazine, February 1926, Vol. 101, p. 26.

^vi “Alumnae Activities,” Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin, 1924.