Barbara Latham

Painter, print maker, and children’s book illustrator, Barbara Latham was born in Walpole, Massachusetts in 1896, and lived most of her life in the Southwest. She was raised in Norwich, Connecticut and studied at the Norwich Free Academy and then attended Pratt Institute from 1915 to her graduation in 1919. She then studied with Andrew Dasburg at the Art Students League summer school in Woodstock, New York. She spent the early part of her career in New York, where she worked for the Norcross Publishing Company, and did illustrations for Forum magazine and The New York Times Sunday magazine. In 1925, Latham went to Taos, New Mexico. She met artist Howard Cook, and the couple married in 1927. In 1933, they made their home near Taos, on the Talpa Ridge just south of the town.  In 1976, they made their final move, which was to Santa Fe. The artist created prints and paintings of New Mexico subjects: the Taos landscape, views of the town and genre depicting the seasons of rural life including that of the Taos Indians.

Among Latham’s one-woman exhibitions are the Witte Memorial Museum, San Antonio, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Roswell Museum, New Mexico and Weyhe Gallery, New York City. Her work is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, and Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.