JewelryandPaintings.com

Old Masters, 19th and 20th Century Art


Susan Ricker Knox

Taxco

(The Santa Prisca Church)


      Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire Knox studied with Howard Pyle at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia and with Douglas Volk and Clifford Grayson at the Cooper Union Art School in New York.  From 1906 to 1907 she furthered her studies in Europe.  Returning home, she opened a studio in New York City and became very popular as a portrait painter.

      Beginning in 1935 she wintered in Mexico and set up a studio in the ancient town of Taxco de Alarcon.  Her work won acceptance with the local people and the government used her paintings in the Mexican Pavilion at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair.  She was also given an exhibition, in 1943, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the most important cultural center in Mexico City.  It is very likely that this work was shown at one or both of these important exhibitions. 

      Today Knox is widely collected both for her portraiture and her depictions of the varied cultural life of Mexico and the southwestern United States.  She was recently featured in the historical exhibit Arizona's Pioneering Women Artists-Impressions of the Grand Canyon State at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff.


​Public Collections

Portsmouth Public Library, NH

Detroit Historical Museum

The Museum of Arts and Sciences, Daytona Beach, FL

Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, IA

Wesleyan College, Macon, GA

​Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis, TN




     































The Santa Prisca Church was built around 1758 and was the tallest structure in Mexico until 1806.  It was built by the Catalan miner Jose de la Borda who was one of Taxco's most prosperous citizens.