Lochrie, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Lochrie was born July 1, 1890, in Deer Lodge, Montana, to Frank and Mary Davey. Her father was an electrician for the City of Butte, and her mother was a musician, dietician and teacher. She had three younger brothers, Joe, Tom, and Clarence. She was educated in Deer Lodge and Butte, later attending the Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, N.Y. for teacher training. Her impressive art education includes instruction from Wienold Reiss, Dorothy Pucinneli, and Victor Arnotoff.

Mrs. Lochrie's art career spanned from the 1920s to the 1950s. Her patrons included the U.S. Treasury Department, the State of Montana, the Ford Motor Company, New York Life Insurance Comapny, and the First National Bank of Seattle. During 1924-1925 she painted eighteen children's murals for the Montana State Hospital at Galen, Montana. After 1931 she specialized in Native American portraits, particularly of Blackfeet tribal members, having produced more that a thousand water colors, oils, murals, and sculptures. In 1937 she won the Treasury Department's competition to paint a mural for the new Dillon post office with "News from the States" depicting the arrival of mail to that community (then known as Black Tail) in 1869. From 1937 to 1939 Lochrie also painted historic murals in the post offices at Burley and Saint Anthony, Idaho. She studied with Wienhold Reiss at Glacier National Park and from 1936 to 1939 she was staff artist for the Great Northern Railroad in Glacier National Park. Her artistic honors also include arts show in New York City and at the prestigious Whitney Museum in Wyoming.

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