Ducks and Hollyhocks

Jessie Arms Botke

Jessie Arms Botke is noted for her imagery of birds in painting, as well as color linocuts. Ducks and Hollyhocks was created after one of her paintings with similar imagery. This rural garden was probably the artist’s garden in Santa Paula, Californa. This rare, intricate color blockprint features 3 ducks in a field of flowers, including hollyhocks.

A native of Chicago, Jessie Arms Botke was a painter, decorator, designer and printmaker who specialized in birds and landscapes. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and then traveled Europe for a time before returning to New York where she found a job at Herter Looms. While on the staff she designed a series of tapestries for the McAlpine Hotel in New York and helped paint murals for the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Other commissions included a peacock frieze for the Billie Burke house and panels for the EI Mirasol Hotel in Santa Barbara, California.

She married artist Cornelis Botke and in 1919 they moved to California, first Carmel and in 1927 they moved to Santa Paula, near Santa Barbara where F. Morley Fletcher had been hired to teach color printmaking in 1923 at the School of the Arts. Jessie and Cornelis collaborated on a number of their color linocuts in the Arts and Crafts style, signing them “Botke Prints”.