13 Facts About Olive Rush

Olive Rush was a painter, illustrator, muralist, and an important pioneer in Native American art education.

Olive Rush's paintings are held in a number of private collections and museums, including: the Brooklyn Museum of New York City, the Haan Mansion Museum of Indiana Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The Olive Rush family lived on a farm in Grant County, Indiana where they were members of the local Society of Friends.

Olive Rush kept diaries at the age of 13 in 1886, writing about her life, school lessons, and going sledding in Indiana winters.

Olive Rush studied at Earlham College, the art school associated with the Corcoran Gallery of Art and at the Art Students League before becoming an illustrator in New York.

Olive Rush was well known for her portraits and paintings of children and women, many of which were featured in magazines such as Woman's Home Companion and St Nicholas.

Olive Rush spent the next year in Europe studying British and French painters, and finished her art education at the Boston Museum School in 1912.

In 1913 Olive Rush returned to Europe with her friend, the watercolorist Alice Schille, visiting Belgium and France.

Olive Rush made several visits to New Mexico over the next couple of years and moved permanently to Santa Fe in 1920.

Olive Rush considered her major influences to be early Chinese art, Japanese art, and El Greco.

Olive Rush was inspired by the colorful style of Hopi and other Puebloan artists of the 1930s and 1940s.

Olive Rush was commissioned by the Section of Fine Arts to complete painted murals for several public buildings in the American West.

Olive Rush taught mural painting to students at the Santa Fe Indian School, which is the Institute of American Indian Arts.