1875-1946 / 1902-1992
Author: Stephen Brigham
The RillitoBend Neighborhood was the home for Maynard Dixon and Edith Hamlin during the 1940s. Dixon (1875-1946) has been considered one of the premier 20th century artists of the American West. His wife, Edith Hamlin (1902-1992), was also an important American landscape painter and muralist known for her social realism murals.
Their winter home was originally part of the former Ronstadt Family Homestead and still stands at the NW corner of Jackson and Prince Road.
The Dixon painting “Home of Tucson” (in the Tucson Museum of Art Collection – a gift of Drs. Mark and Kathleen Sublette) features the Dixon/Hamlin home in the left edge of the painting next to the Ronstadt home with the Santa Catalina Mountains in the background.
To acquire land for their home, Dixon traded a painting with Gilbert Ronstadt in 1940 for land where the house was built in 1941 by Tucson architect/contractor, John Joynt. The house is in the style of “Pueblo Revival” and included studio space for both artists.
While Dixon and Hamlin lived in our neighborhood, they painted many paintings of the Southwest. After Dixon died in this house in 1946, Hamlin moved back to San Francisco where she continued her mural work and landscape paintings. Although their original house has been changed since the 1940s, many of the original house details are still present.
For further information, the “Art of the American West collection” at the Tucson Museum of Art has several important Dixon works including the “Home of Tucson” painting that was painted in the RillitoBend Neighborhood. The Maynard Dixon & Native American Art Museum in Tucson (6866 E. Sunrise Dr. Suite 150) has one of the finest collections of Dixon original oils, drawings, sketches, handwritten poems, books, and ephemera. The Brigham Young University Museum of Art in Provo, Utah also has an important collection of Dixon’s work. Hamlin’s work can be seen in several locations including a Works Progress Administration (WPA) mural project at the Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. Other murals by Hamlin are at the Mission High School in San Francisco, the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix and approximately 30 other locations around the west.