ADELAIDE LAWSON GAYLOR

Modernist painter Adelaide Jaffrey Lawson Gaylor was born in New York City and studied at the Art Students League with Kenneth Hayes Miller. Gaylor was a member of the Society of Independent Artists and the Salons of America, where she exhibited, as well as a member of the New York Society of Women Artists. She had solo shows at Gallery 134 on West 4th Street, New York and Lakewood Gallery in Glen Cove, New York, and her works appeared at the Downtown and Midtown Galleries (New York), Gallery Odin (Port Washington), the Whitney Studio Club and the Whitney Museum.

Gaylor was a participant in the inaugural Tanner Art League exhibition of 1922. In 1926 Adelaide Lawson married artist Wood Gaylor, who studied with Walt Kuhn at the National Academy of Design and exhibited with him in the 1913 Armory Show. Both Adelaide and Wood Gaylor were active in the New York art world, with friends and associates from New York’s artistic, performing and intellectual circles. Archival records reveal their relationships with Marsden Hartley, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Peggy Bacon, Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, Betty and John Dos Passos (with whom Adelaide painted), Fiorello La Guardia, and Josephine Baker, among many others. The couple moved from Manhattan to Glenwood Landing, Long Island in 1932 where they gave art classes and mounted exhibitions in their barn. Adelaide Lawson Gaylor remained an area resident until her death in 1986.