Kenneth Callahan
1905-1986
“I wanted to be an artist and that was that. Whatever that meant, I accepted that completely without thought… It’s just simply the only way I can conceive of living…. It just always had been so. It’s like how tall I am. There’s no point in arguing about it.”
—Oral history interview with Kenneth Callahan, 1982
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
Callahan remembered his mother dampening and ironing the cheesecloth-backed paintings in process that Charles M. Russell (1864-1926) carried in his backpack to the Callahan home in Glasgow, Montana. Encouraged by his mother, Callahan began painting watercolors when he was seven. His friendship with local Blackfoot Indian bronco riding champ, Ralph Breckenridge, also a painter, helped Kenneth avoid being beaten up for such “sissy stuff.”
Born in Spokane, Kenneth was raised in Montana and spent most of his adult life in the Seattle area where he established himself as one of the leading Northwest painters of the 20th century. He received attention early in his career and made important contributions to the development of Northwest art as a curator and art critic during the 1950s. His Seattle home became a central gathering place of many important Northwest artists of the early 20th century.
- Callahan was only 27 when his work was included in the seminal First Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Art at the Whitney Museum, in New York, 1933
- Life magazine dubbed him one of the four leading Pacific Northwest painters, 1953
- Curator, Seattle Art Museum, 1933–1953
- Art Critic, The Seattle Times, 1950s
- Guggenheim Fellowship, 1954
- Major retrospective, Henry Art Gallery, 1973
Mexican Dogs
“Seeing is the thing, seeing with the inner eye and the outer eye, seeing in the maximum possible degree the visual world around me, the flux of life, the process of forming, growth, disintigration, death, repeated in all forms…”
—Iridescent Light: The Emergence of Northwest Art by Delores Tarzan-Ament
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002
1950s
ink and watercolor on paper
Museum purchase, 1984
Accession Number 2979.2
Rising Waves
“…The repetition of kinds of form, movement, designs, patterns. You find this in all things, in the flow of water, sand patterns, wind currents, the muscles of men and horses.”
—Iridescent Light: The Emergence of Northwest Art by Delores Tarzan-Ament
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002
1979
oil on canvas
Gift of Safeco Insurance, a member of the Liberty Mutual Group and Washington Art Consortium, 2010
Accession Number 4234.6
The Meeting
An artist may depict one subject to express something entirely different.
Born in Spokane in 1905, Kenneth Callahan grew up in Glasgow Montana. His earliest pictures were scenes of working loggers—brown-toned, heroic figures of working men. “Logging wasn't the subject at all,” he later said. “It was the big rhythmic movement and two men dancing with each other.”
—Kenneth Callahan Papers
Archives of Northwest Art, University of Washington Libraries
1965
tempera on paper
Gift of Safeco Insurance, a member of the Liberty Mutual Group and Washington Art Consortium, 2010
Accession Number 4234.5
The Suitor
“Seeing is the thing, seeing with the inner eye and the outer eye, seeing in the maximum possible degree the visual world around me, the flux of life, the process of forming, growth, disintigration, death, repeated in all forms…”
—Iridescent Light: The Emergence of Northwest Art by Delores Tarzan-Ament
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002
1956
tempera on paper
Bequest of Emily Winthrop Miles, 1964
Accession Number 2540.2
Three Horses
“Seeing is the thing, seeing with the inner eye and the outer eye, seeing in the maximum possible degree the visual world around me, the flux of life, the process of forming, growth, disintigration, death, repeated in all forms…”
—Iridescent Light: The Emergence of Northwest Art by Delores Tarzan-Ament
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002
1956
tempera on paper
Bequest of Emily Winthrop Miles, 1964
Accession Number 2540.1