(Shore of Columbia River, St. Helens)

Dorr Bothwell

The town of St. Helens is located along the shores of the Columbia River, just under thirty miles north of Portland, Oregon. It was named for its position facing the Mount St. Helens peak in the state of Washington. St. Helens is the seat of Columbia County and at the time of this watercolor’s creation it was a major port town whose major shipments included the lumber used to build up the West Coast, from southwestern Canada to Los Angeles.

In this image Dorr Bothwell depicts houses on the shore of the Columbia that likely housed lumber mill employees and their families. Scattered along the sandy belt are milled logs that washed ashore, as well as row boats, and the remains of an old pier. In the background, the lush, dense forest provides a cool green wall protecting the small community from the sounds of highway 30.

Dorris Hodgson Bothwell, known as Dorr, was born in San Francisco in 1902. Her family moved to San Diego in 1911 and Bothwell began her art studies five years later with Anna Valentien. She returned to San Francisco in 1921 and enrolled in the California School of Fine Arts where she was greatly influenced by Gottardo Piazzoni. Bothwell continued her studies at the University of Oregon, Eugene and then returned to San Francisco where she attended the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design.

Bothwell moved to San Diego and then to Los Angeles where she joined the circle of post-surrealists which included Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundberg. She studied under Feitelson in classes organized by the Public Works of Art Project and she was accepted into the mural division of the WPA and painted murals in Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Francisco.