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A tribute to Annie Snyder

Masonic Temple continues to display work of local artist from over 100 years ago

LANA MUTHLER/THE EXPRESS Winter by Annie Snyder as part of her series entitled The Seasons. Currently on display at the Lock Haven Masonic Temple.

LOCK HAVEN — Annie M. Snyder was born in Salona on Jan. 2, 1852. She was the daughter of Mary Donnahay Snyder and James Snyder who died of consumption (tuberculosis) six months before Annie was born.

Annie’s talent became evident in Daniel Hard’s elementary school when she would draw beautiful pictures on the back of maps she was supposed to be studying. She was rewarded for her pictures with a rap on her knuckles by her teacher.

According to an interview Annie gave to a Philadelphia newspaper, The North American, in 1901, the first time she saw real paint brushes and tubes was when she was sent by her mother to a neighbor’s house to borrow some “housewifey trifle.” The neighbor’s daughter had brought back paintings from Baltimore which fascinated Annie. She then “realized that there were people in the world who made pictures.”

A local art teacher, Miss Beckwith, recognized her talent and recommended that Annie go to Baltimore to study with Dr. Emil Kett, her former teacher. Annie borrowed enough money from relatives and friends to get to Baltimore but she did not have enough money for classes so she just spent several weeks sitting behind the professor taking notes on what he did and how he did it.

She returned to Salona where she continued to paint, give private art lessons, and worked a farm she bought to help support her mother, her stepfather (Samuel Best) and her stepbrother (Harry Lincoln Best). From 1878 until at least 1885 and from 1893 to 1898, Annie taught painting and wax-work at the Central State Normal School.

LANA MUTHLER/THE EXPRESS Spring by Annie Snyder as part of her series entitled The Seasons. Currently on display at the Lock Haven Masonic Temple.

Local businesses such as J.W., Bridgens’ Department Store and Emma J. Dunn’s millinery shop displayed Annie’s paintings in their store windows.

She also raffled off her paintings to supplement the money she earned through commissions and the sale of produce from her farm. It was not unusual to see her walking from Salona to Lock Haven with either produce to sell at the twice weekly city market or a painting under her arm. Annie would sell 25 cent chances door-to-door for her non-commissioned paintings of fruit, landscapes, animals, or reproductions of classical paintings.

After the death of her mother and the marriage of her stepbrother and the birth of seven children, Annie sold the farm at a loss and gathered her savings and moved to Philadelphia in 1901 to open a studio.

She had an exhibition of two of her paintings in the window of Moore’s Art Shop in Atlantic City. She received positive reviews of her paintings by several prominent art critics. Moore himself compared her work to that of Rosa Bonheur, a prominent French artist who specialized in realistic paintings of animals. Annie worked for Mr. Moore as a restorer of paintings. She often gathered crowds when she set up her easel and painted outside the store or on the Boardwalk.

The 1901 article in the Philadelphia newspaper described Annie Snyder as a “middle-aged, keen-featured, sun-browned farmer woman with the hands of a plough boy and the heart of a painter — aye, and the skill of one, too…” While in Lock Haven, she usually dressed in a simple black silk shirtwaist and a black long skirt. While in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Atlantic City, she was described as being fashionably dressed and wearing expensive jewelry while interacting with her friends in the art and social circles of the cities. Her paintings were sold at Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia and Macy’s in New York City.

LANA MUTHLER/THE EXPRESS Summer by Annie Snyder as part of her series entitled The Seasons. Currently on display at the Lock Haven Masonic Temple.

After several years, she moved back to Lock Haven permanently. She first opened a studio in the Schroeder Building at the corner of Main and Vesper Streets. Later she moved her studio to the Sidney Furst Building across from the Fallon Hotel on E. Water St. while living with Harry Best on East Bald Eagle St.

While in Lock Haven, she continued to paint portraits for prominent citizens. P.A. Zindel commissioned the portrait of his daughter Margaret “Maggie” Zindel, who later was a math teacher at the local high school. Several portraits of local public officials were commissioned by Colonel Henry Shoemaker which he donated to the courthouse. Those portraits are now at the Heisey House Museum.

Late in her career, Annie Snyder completed several large-scale paintings. J.W. Bridgens commissioned four large paintings entitled The Seasons, which were to be displayed in the third floor lounge of his department store. The paintings were later displayed in Grossman’s Women’s Store and then, as now, in the Masonic Temple.

Several area churches were recipients of Annie Snyder’s large scale paintings. A member of the E. Main St. Methodist Church, Annie painted Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane which was placed behind the pulpit in 1916. The 8′ x 10′ painting took ten months to complete. The 8′ x 12′ painting of The Good Shepherd took two years to complete. It was displayed in her E. Water St. studio until its 1918 installation in the Mt. Bethel Church in Parvan near Lamar. A similar painting was later placed in the Jacksonville Methodist Church.

She stopped painting for the last five years of her life due to ill health. She continued to live with her stepbrother Harry on E. Bald Eagle St. On Jan. 7, 1927, Annie Snyder died from rectal cancer just five days after her 75th birthday. She is buried in the Cedar Hill Cemetery.

LANA MUTHLER/THE EXPRESS Autumn by Annie Snyder as part of her series entitled The Seasons. Currently on display at the Lock Haven Masonic Temple.

Daniel Kelly Shadle (D.K.), feeling that Annie Snyder’s accomplishments as an artist had been vastly underappreciated, began to collect her paintings. He started with the purchase of Annie’s etching of a lion’s head which is currently guarding the downstairs hallway of the Clinton County Historical Society’s Heisey House Museum. In 1979, the family of the late D.K. Shadle donated 20 paintings from Shadle’s collection to the CCHS.

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