Painting

Object NamePainting

Artist / Maker Etta May Budd (American, 1863 - 1952)

Date1901

OriginUSA

MediumWatercolor

Dimensions18 x 22 in. (45.7 x 55.9 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineTransferred from the Parks Library. In the Farm House Museum Collection, Farm House Museum, University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.

Object number92.7.1

Status

On view

Collections

CultureAmerican

Label TextThis watercolor was created in 1901 by Etta May Budd, who lived in the Farm House with her family in 1877 while her father, Joseph Lancaster Budd, was a horticulture professor and farm superintendent. Etta May eventually became an art instructor at Simpson College, where she met and established a friendship with student George Washington Carver. It was on Budd’s recommendation that Carver transferred to the Iowa Agricultural College in Ames to study horticulture in 1891, becoming the school’s first Black graduate. Carver went on to become a world-renowned botanist and agricultural researcher as well as Iowa State’s first Black professor. Of Etta Budd, Carver wrote to Louis Pammel in 1922: “From here [Indianola, Iowa] I went to Ames, Iowa to take a course in Agriculture, persuaded to do so by my art teacher, Miss Etta M. Budd, to whom I am greatly indebted for whatever measure of success that has come to me. Miss Budd helped me in whatever way she could; often going far out of her way to encourage and see that I had such things as I needed. During my six years in College, her interest in me never waned.” (Correspondence, Carver to Pammel, May 5, 1922. University Archives, Special Collections, Iowa State University Library)

MarkingsSigned in lower left corner by artist, "E.M. Budd, 01"

Locations