Bertha Rockwell (1874-1970) American, Mixed Media. Signed lower right. Depicts a house in darkness behind a line of twisted trees. Overall size: 25 X 21 3/4 in. Sight size: 21 X 17 1/2 in. #1625 . Bertha Rockwell was born in Junction City, Kansas, in 1874. Her father, a captain in the Union forces during the American Civil War, was one of the foremost merchants, bankers, lumber dealers, and contractors in the state. After the death of her uncle William Bingham Clarke, the family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1906 to be close to his widow. After two of her father’s employees were killed in a fire at his mercantile store, he began to suffer from ill health, and his doctors told him that he should travel. During their travels around the world the five Rockwell daughters began to take various interests in the arts. Bertha earned a degree in Art at Wellesley College and studied at the Chicago Art Institute, painting and studying further in Paris, Rome, Florence, and Madrid. She exhibited paintings in Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and the Paris Salon, and in the Spring of 1909 she studied in Florence, meeting the architect Carlo Gino Venanzi, who she married the following year. They divided their time between Rome, Assisi, Italy, and Kansas City, Missouri, and were forced to flee Europe when their Italian villas were requisitioned by Benito Mussolini during World War II. A tireless artist who used dark shades to convey the magnitude of nature and mankind’s place within it, Bertha died in her home in Rome in 1970. Location Box 8