William de Leftwich Dodge was born in Virginia in 1867 and took up painting at age twelve when his mother moved the family to Europe to become a painter herself. His formal artistic education began in Paris, where Dodge studied at the famed École des Beaux Arts alongside anatomist George Bridgman, sculptor Frederick William MacMonnies, and post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin. During his time in France, Dodge received numerous awards for his work and exhibited multiple pieces at the prestigious Salon in Paris.
When Dodge returned to the United States in the fall of 1889, he began seeking commissions for large-scale works. He painted a dome ceiling for the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and a set of murals for the Library of Congress in 1896. The list of murals executed by Dodge over his career is extensive and includes pieces in courthouses, libraries, medical facilities, and city halls across the United States. Dodge’s artistic style was deeply influenced by his early mentor Jean-Léon Gérôme and the French Impressionists he learned alongside in his youth. Those effects are most evident in his smaller paintings, such as those housed at the M.A.R.I. Archive.
Mitla, Oaxaca, Mexico.
After a lengthy and successful artistic and commercial career, Dodge turned his attention toward the study of archaeology and the Americas, a subject that had been the focus of many of his most famous works, such as The Death of Minnehaha (1885). In 1930, Dodge embarked on a multi-month journey to Mexico and Central America. He, his wife, and their daughter visited sites including Uxmal, Labna, Sayil, Chichén Itzá, Mitla, and San Juan Teotihuacán. The watercolor paintings that Dodge created over the course of this trip catalog the excavation projects he both witnessed and participated in, as well as the overarching beauty of Mesoamerican architecture. The undertaking was no small feat at age 63, but Dodge’s longstanding interest in Mesoamerican civilizations won out.
This lifelong fascination also led Dodge to cross paths with M.A.R.I.’s second director, Frans Blom, who corresponded with Dodge and his wife on a variety of topics surrounding Maya archaeology. A selection of Dodge’s watercolors were also displayed in the replica Maya temple organized by M.A.R.I. for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.
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