Martha Farham Cahoon (1905-1999)
Martha was originally from the Rosindale section of Boston, born to Swedish immigrants in 1905.
Her father, Axel Farham, was a talented furniture decorator who learned his art in his native Sweden. He worked for some of the best-known decorating firms in Boston. When Martha was 10 years old, the family moved to the Cape Cod town of Harwich. She excelled in school, but chose to apprentice with her father after high school. Under his tutelage, she mastered rosemaling, a freehand method of decorative painting featuring scrolls and flowers. She also learned the more practical aspects of furniture decorating, including varnishing and stenciling. She married painter Ralph Cahoon in 1931.
Once Ralph and Martha were married, Martha taught Ralph the art of decorating furniture. They bought a small house in the village of Osterville and established a business selling their painted furniture as well as antiques. In 1945, they moved to a 1775 Georgian Colonial farmhouse in nearby Cotuit. They carefully restored and decorated it to provide a suitable setting for their increasingly popular decorated furniture and accessories.
Around 1953, one of their admirers, the wealthy art collector Joan Whitney Payson, convinced the Cahoons to do some primitive paintings that could be framed and hung on the wall. She showed their efforts at her Country Art Gallery on Long Island with great success and in 1954 gave them their first two-person show. It was a sell-out, as were virtually all of their shows there over the next 25 years. Soon, they were also showing their work annually on Nantucket and in Palm Beach and were being invited to exhibit at other galleries around the country. Vose Galleries of Boston – which didn’t normally show folk art at all – gave them a two-person exhibit in 1960. At the Cahoons’ own gallery in Cotuit, patrons included Kennedys, Mellons and du Ponts.
While the Cahoons decorated furniture, their styles, subject matter and palette were virtually indistinguishable. Their transition to easel painting marked the emergence of stylistic differences.
Martha Cahoon’s palette and style were softer – as was her sense of humor. In addition to mermaids, she painted pastoral scenes highlighting the different seasons, floral still lifes, children and animals. She and Ralph both painted almost exclusively on masonite, which gave them the same hard, smooth finish they’d become accustomed to while decorating furniture.
After Ralph died in 1982, the Cahoons’ home was transformed into an art museum named in their honor. Founded in 1984, the Cahoon Museum of American Art features a permanent collection divided between the Cahoons’ paintings and 19th-century American art. Martha, who was given lifetime rights to live in four rooms on the ground floor, died in 1999.
biography provided to p4A by the Cahoon Museum of American Art (www.cahoonmuseum.org).