About the work

This colorful depiction of St. Mary’s Church in Virginia City dates from the 1960s when Elizabeth Holland McDaniel was routinely taking summer retreats from her life in Bolinas, California, to teach art classes and lead seminars in Virginia City and Reno. McDaniel’s works were so well regarded by 1965 that more than two dozen of her paintings were exhibited at the Nevada Art Gallery, which was the forerunner of today’s Nevada Museum of Art.

A biography of McDaniel published in conjunction with her 1965 exhibition described the artist as a native of Michigan who studied portrait and sculpture at Santa Barbara, landscape painting in Pasadena, and at Ecole d'Artes Americanes in France. She received additional training in San Francisco from Warren Brandon (whose influences are evident in her depiction of St. Mary’s Church). McDaniels also produced fine and commercial art while living in New York City. 

By 1966 McDaniel was a member of the Tahoe Art League, and in July of that year she joined other League members to restore badly weathered wooden grave markers at St. Mary Church in Virginia City. A version of St. Mary’s Church titled “The Pearl of the Comstock” that she painted sometime around 1968 received an award in Nevada’s Centennial Art Contest. Her work is represented in the collection of the Bolinas Museum in California.        

This painting is housed in the original frame. It has some age-related toning and minor stains to the linen liner, otherwise exceptionally fine.  

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