Gerald Cassidy

born Covington, Kentucky, 1869; died Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1934

BiographyGerald Cassidy was born in Covington, Kentucky, in 1869 but was raised in Cincinnati, where he studied under Frank Duveneck at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. He was working as an art director at a lithography firm in New York City when, in 1899, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and moved to a sanatorium in Albuquerque. After regaining his health he worked as a commercial artist in Denver, returning briefly to New York before moving permanently to Santa Fe in 1912. Cassidy became one of the first artists to establish a colony there and was known for his paintings of the regional native cultures and the southwestern landscape. He gained recognition for his murals after winning the grand prize for his work The Cliff Dwellers of the Southwest in the Indian Arts Building at the 1915 Panama-California International Exposition in San Diego. Cassidy died in 1934 from carbon monoxide poisoning while working on a commissioned mural in the Federal Building in Santa Fe.

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