Edwin M. Dawes, Fields of May

EDWIN M. DAWES
1872-1945

Fields of May
Oil on canvas, ca. 1915

Edwin Dawes was born in Boone, Iowa in 1872. He studied art in Pennsylvania with William Lathrop and the New Hope school of American Barbizon painters. He supported himself as a sign painter in Minneapolis for several years, but continued to paint and study art in his spare time. He exhibited with the Minneapolis Artists’ League and his work was shown at the 1913 Chicago Art Institute show.

In 1914 Dawes moved West, traveling and painting in Montana, Arizona, Missouri and Nevada. He worked for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company, painting the Grand Canyon and Glacier National Park. He settled in California in 1915, but left frequently to explore mining possibilities in gold and silver. He lived for a time in Fallon and in Reno. Dawes died in Los Angeles in 1945.

--Kathleen Durham and Lois Smalley