Marjorie Tietjens (1895-1987)

Marjorie Tietjens was born February 26, 1895, in New Rochelle, New York. She grew up in Europe because her father was the European agent for an American typewriter company. She studied at the Royal Drawing Society of London from the ages of twelve through twenty, finishing in 1915. She won many awards there and worked as an examiner. After World War I, when she was a nurse in the British Army, Tietjens studied at the Chateau Brillantmont in Switzerland. She later spent four years at the British Academy in Rome.

The year 1927 was a big one for the artist in New York City, she executed a commission for twenty-two city scenes and portraits of children; returned to Rome, completing her studies at the Academy; and married Paul Tietjens, composer of the score for the original opera The Wizard of Oz. They traveled in Europe for the next few years, Tietjens becoming well-known for her floral paintings. Tietjens moved to New York City in 1932, remaining there until her husband's death in 1940, and her departure in 1942, at the invitation of her husband's cousins, to visit Las Cruces, New Mexico. Thus began her forty-five-year love affair with the desert West. Tietjens married Frederick H. Carroll in Las Cruces.

She painted widely around the state, with extended periods in Taos and Santa Fe. Her subjects included New Mexico families, life on cattle ranches, roundups and cowboys in the landscape, as well as church interiors, early adobes, and other historic structures. Many paintings were set in moonlight.

Tietjens had one-person exhibitions at Texas Western University (now the University of Texas at El Paso), in 1945, and New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, in 1958.
Other shows included those of Mansell's Gallery, London; West of England Academy, Liverpool, England; Welsh Academy, Bristol, England; Ferran's Gallery, Hull, England; Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe; Kocians Gallery, St. Louis; El Paso Museum of Art, Texas; Blue Door Gallery, Taos; Sun Carnival, El Paso; Roswell Museum, New Mexico; and Springville Museum of Art, Utah.

Marjorie Tietjens died July 16, 1987, in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

References for Tietjens life and work include Petteys; Dawdy 2; R. Fisher; Desert Magazine, Mar 1950; Daily Mail (Paris), 28 May 1924; Las Cruces Sun News, 1 Mar 1958, 10 Dec 1972, 29 Jul 1987; El Paso Times, 19 Mar 1967; Museum of New Mexico files, Santa Fe; M. Tietjens, 1976; Getz Funeral Home, Las Cruces, 1993.

Source:
Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki Kovinick, "An Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West"

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Amendment: Paul Tietjens did not die in 1940, but on November 25, 1943, in St. Louis, MO. According to his obituary, his wife Marjorie attended his funeral and lived with him in St. Louis for the last year of his illness (cancer), so although she may have visited New Mexico prior to his death, I doubt she moved to Las Cruces permanently until after he died. Paul Tietjens did have cousins there, the Frengers, and she did move there. (Submitted by Laura C. Rader who is an author writing a novel about the life of Paul Tietjens)
Western, Mexican, cowboys, adobe.