Spring Will Come

In 1939, artist-in-residence John Steuart Curry and John Barton, Professor of Rural Sociology, established the Wisconsin Regional Art Program (WRAP) at the University of Wisconsin. They were supported by the Dean of the College of Agriculture, Chris Christensen. The program hosted the first statewide Rural Arts Exhibit in 1940 at the Memorial Union as part of the University’s annual Farm and Home Week. Participants were non-professional artists from rural backgrounds. WRAP encouraged laypeople to create art, cultivate personal styles, and draw inspiration from daily life. Emphasis was placed on personal expression rather than technical skill. Curry and Barton believed not only that art and culture enriched the lives of farmers, but also saw artistic expression and participation in culture as a sign of a healthy democracy. The program received national attention in the 1940s and Barton published Rural Arts of Wisconsin in 1948, featuring biographies of many of WRAP’s artists to promote the program’s mission and celebrate its success. WRAP continued under the Division of Continuing Studies at the University of Wisconsin until 2020. It hosted regional art exhibits and workshops and purchased over 110 works of art for its permanent collection. As a young woman and schoolteacher, Carrie Stratton Ubbelohde enjoyed painting in watercolor and drawing in crayon and relied on both to decorate her schoolhouses, including one in nearby Cottage Grove. After her marriage in 1916, she took her first oil painting lessons from Hattie Croghan of Plymouth, Wisconsin. Like many women involved with WRAP, she was a farmer’s wife and a mother, who painted in her free time. She became a popular local artist in Sheboygan County, exhibited at local venues, and welcomed schoolchildren to her farmhouse in Waldo where she gave painting demonstrations. She modeled WRAP’s goal of expanding art instruction into rural areas. According to Barton, Ubbelohde was a faithful attendee of the annual Rural Art Exhibit and WRAP ultimately acquired three of her paintings. While she also painted whimsical farm scenes, Spring Will Come is representative of her landscape paintings, which have an atmospheric quality. This scene features an idealized white farmhouse and red barn and outbuildings, with an uneven brown field stretched out before it. According to Barton, she preferred to sketch her landscapes in open air in pencil or charcoal and finish them in oils at her house.