This is a collection of materials related to the San Francisco Society of Women Artists (from 1946 through this writing known as the San Francisco Women Artists). The group has its origins in the Sketch Club, founded in 1887 by nine women who were former California School of Design students. The Sketch Club briefly merged with the San Francisco Society of Artists in 1914, which then became part of the San Francisco Art Association in 1915. The San Francisco Society of Women Artists splintered off as their own group in 1925. Material in this collection spans all of these eras and includes scattered catalogs from the annual and semi-annual art exhibits of the Sketch Club and the San Francisco Society of Women Artists, as well as administrative materials, letters, announcements, bulletins, news clippings, receipts, bank books, treasurer's reports and some scattered membership information dating from 1895 through 1960.

The San Francisco Society of Women Artists (later San Francisco Women Artists) is one of California’s oldest arts organizations; its roots originate in the 1887 founding of the Sketch Club. The Sketch Club was started as an art association for women artists by nine former California School of Design (later the San Francisco Art Institute) students, including Josephine Hyde, Nellie Treat, Nellie Stearns Goodloe, and Lucia Mathews. Preceding the founding of the Sketch Club, a pioneering exhibition of all-woman artists was hosted by the California School of Design in December 1885. The San Francisco Women Artists mark this exhibition as the beginning of their story. In her essay, “Searching for Selfhood: Women Artists of Northern California,” in Independent Spirits: Women Artists of the American West, Susan Landauer (UC Press: 1995) describes the Sketch Club as San Francisco women artists’ response to the all male Bohemian Club. Landauer also notes that it is fitting the West Coast, and the California School of Design in particular, would give rise to one of the first all-women arts organizations: From the time it was opened in 1874, the California School of Design included women as members, and of the sixty students in the first class of enrollees, 46 were women. From its founding in 1887, the Sketch Club hosted semi-annual art exhibits featuring member art, monthly lectures, and weekly sketching trips. The club’s headquarters was destroyed in San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake and fire, and in the aftermath the Sketch Club merged with other organizations and began including men artists in exhibitions and as full members and officers (previously men were limited to participating as associate members). In 1914 the membership of the Sketch Club officially voted to merge into the San Francisco Society of Artists, which quickly then became part of the San Francisco Art Association in 1915. On January 8, 1925, Eleanor Treat gathered together a small group of women from the San Francisco Art Association to discuss reforming a women-only organization in the spirit of the Sketch Club. From that meeting, they formed the San Francisco Society of Women Artists on February 12, 1925 with Eva Almond Withrow as president and Eleanor Treat and Elizabeth Norton as vice presidents. Other officers and directors included Florence Ingalsbe Tufts, Amy Dewing Flemming, E. Shotwell Goeller, Alice B. Chittenden, Helen Forbes, Almira Judson, Lucia Mathews, and F. W. Vaughan. In 1931, Frida Kahlo (listed under the name Senora Frieda Rivera) exhibited her painting “Frieda and Diego Rivera” at the "Sixth Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists," the first public showing of Kahlo's work. In 1946, the group shortened its name to San Francisco Women Artists (though this change is not consistently reflected in news reports about the group in the early years of the change).

One document box (containing 16 folders), approximately 0.46 linear feet.

The collection is open for research use.