Patricia & Archie Boyd Teater papers

Collection

Identifier: MS 0666

Staff Only

Summary

Archie Boyd Teater was a Western-American artist who – along with his wife Patricia – created, exhibited, and sold artwork all over the world. Collection consists of correspondence, financial documents, exhibition catalogs, newspaper clippings and other material related to their art careers and personal lives.

Dates

Creation: 1920 - 1990

Biographical Note

Archie Teater was born in Boise, Idaho, on July 5, 1901. In seventh grade, he was kicked out of the Ten Mile School in Boise for drawing during arithmetic. At age 23, he studied for two years at the Portland Art Museum. He then studied for eight years at the Art Students League and in New York, Europe, and Asia. In 1928, he built and worked in an art studio in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He spent every summer there painting except during World War II.

Teater met and married Patricia Wilson in Jackson Hole in 1941. She was also an artist and acted as Teater's gallery and business manager. The couple traveled the globe, and Teater painted in each of the 115 countries they visited. He painted portraits, street scenes, still life, and landscapes in oils. His work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and other museums in the US, as well as art galleries in Europe. Teater's paintings could be found in the collections of such people as DeRham and Rockefeller. He was featured in magazines such as "Art News," "Art Digest," "Better Homes and Gardens," "Flair," and more. The US State Department borrowed 12 of his Idaho scenics to display in US Embassies around the world.

Teater's Americana series won him an honorary membership in the Mark Twain Society. He won several awards, including the National Art Guild's award for the best landscape painting in the national exhibit in 1957. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright admired his work, and the Teaters commissioned him to design a house for them in Bliss, Idaho (1952-55). The sudio is the only Wright-designed building in Idaho. Teater passed away on July 19, 1978 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Mineesota. He donated his international collection of about 545 paintings to teh Mayo Clinic one year before his death. His other paintings were put in trust to be sold with the proceeds benefiting people with disabilities. Many of those paintings are now in the care of the Hagerman Valley Historical Society Museum.

Patricia passed away in 1981 in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.