ELIZA ROSSANA LAMB BARCHUS (1857 – 1959) 

Unfortunately, not much is known about Eliza’s early life.  According to book Eliza R. Barchus: The Oregon Artist, she was born in Salt Lake City, Utah on December 4, 1857.  Her father died while she was still a young child and when her mother remarried they moved to Abiline, Kansas. This move appeared to be only temporary, as the family moved from town to town in search of work. At the age of seventeen, Eliza Lamb married John V. Lansing. Two children were born from this union prior to its disolution. Eliza remarried to John Hedges Barchus and they relocated to Portland, Oregon in 1880. It is not known exactly when or where they married. Eliza Barchus was twenty-two when she arrived in what would become her adopted home for the remainder of her 102 year life.

It is also not known why Portland was chosen to begin their life together. It could have been because of favorable job prospects or just the lure of the west.  However, this may have been the first time in Eliza’s life where she felt that she could put down roots. It also brought out her interest in becoming an artist. In 1884 she took her first, and apparently only, painting lessons. She chose to study under William S. Parrott, a leading artist of the area at the time. She most assuredly selected Parrot as her instructor because she admired his work. Early Barchus paintings have a very similar look to his, and even as Eliza’s painting style matured she never strayed too far from his representation of nature.

Eliza had a strong natural ability to paint. She almost immediately began her career as an professional artist, a career that would ultimately span 50 years. The earliest exhibition record of her work is at the Seventh Annual Portland Mechanics Exposition in 1885. In his exhibition the judges awarded her “best landscape in oil painting.” The painting, not located, was called “Columbia.” Her entries at the Ninth Annual Mechanics Fair in 1887 earned a gold medal, followed with a silver medal at the following year’s Fair.  

At this same time, Eliza was confident in her skills and was offering painting lessons to students by 1886.  A brief mention in The Oregonian, the prominent newspaper of Portland, indicates that her fee was 50 cents per lesson. She arranged painting classes at many small communities in Oregon and Washington for several years prior to 1900.

With back-to-back medal honors, and local encouragement, Barchus decided to exhibit at the National Academy of Design’s 9th Annual Winter Exhibition (1890).  She travelled to New York with her selected entry that well represented her adopted state – “Mt Hood.” Thus, at thirty-two years of age, Eliza Barchus was exhibiting at one of America’s greatest artist venues. Several years later, in 1898, she submitted “Mt Langley, Cal” at the National Academy’s 17th Annual Winter Exhibition.

While her art career was developing, her family was growing. By 1893 two additional children – Harold and Agnes – had been born. There was also one child – Belle – from her first marriage and Eliza’s mother in the household. The Barchus family decided to build their first home. This would be the first of six homes that Barchus would have built. Construction costs were often paid for by barter – her paintings traded for labor and materials.  Four of the six homes still stand in what is now inner SE Portland (see images of most of these homes in the Ephemera Index).

In 1898, John Barchus died. Supporting the family now fell solely on Eliza’s artistic abilities.  But Barchus was now in the peak of her career and well established. Her tourist trade sales were no doubt doing well and she had dealers in various cities handling her work (Lichtenberger’s Art Emporium in Los Angeles, Schweigart’s Art Store in Tacoma and B. B. Rich Cigars in Portland, for example).

The following year she exhibited at the Oregon Industrial Exhibition and received favorable press: “the piece de resistance of this part of the exhibit is the great oil painting of Mirror Lake, Nevada, by Mrs. H. H. Barchus.” The critic goes on to say that “The whole picture is full of atmosphere, and in this, as well as in the other pieces of canvas that hang on the walls bearingher signature, one cannot fail to observe the perfect harmony of color between water and sky, the one always faithfully reflecting the other as in nature.” Yes, Eliza was in the peak of her artistic career.

Like other artists, she had popular subjects which necessitated painting replacements when the previous ones sold.  One frequently finds affixed to the reverse of her smaller works completed on panel, a studio advertising label that offers her standard subjects – “Mt. Hood,” “Mt. Rainier,” “Mt. Shasta,” “Multnomah Falls” and “Rooster Rock” – at set prices for given standard sizes. At some point, she began to execute multiple paintings of essentially identical composition simultaniously. (An 1890’s photograph, illustrated in the Ephemera Index, shows Barchus at her easel working on two “Mt. Shasta” paintings that are in the same state of completion.)  It is believed that at the peak of her career, she was producing ten or more paintings in  assembly line fashion – pot boilers – to maintain sufficient painting inventory.