Station Archive

If you go this spring to the Gibson House, a 19th century mansion-turned-museum in Woodland, you can see portraits of people who lived in Yolo County in the 19th century. There are a lot of stories in those paintings, and in the painters, all of whom worked in Yolo County.

One of the six artists exhibited is Calthea Campbell Vivian, described as “one of the leading artists of the West” in her time. Another was an accomplished painter who couldn’t make a living at it, which ended his marriage … and his daughter became a famous opera singer in Britain. And her daughter, his granddaughter, became the youngest baroness in England.

Who are the people in the paintings? What did they want their portraits to tell us? What’s it like to stand in the rooms of this landmark house and look at them, looking back at us? We talk about all this today on Davisville with Sarah Bartlett, museum curator for the Yolo County Historical Collection, which is presenting “Picturing Yolo County exhibit: paintings by past local artists” through June 17.

Photo shows painting of 66-year-old Mary Blowers of Woodland, 1896, by Calthea Campbell Vivian