Cassidy, Gerald

Ira Dymond [Diamond] Gerald Cassidy (he later changed it to Gerald Cassidy) was born in Covington, Kentucky on November 10, 1869. Some biographers adopt a different date and point to Cincinnati as his birthplace, where in fact he was raised. He studied under Frank Duveneck at the old Mechanic's Institute, where he was awarded his first prize in drawing at the age of twelve.

In 1899, faced with a life expectancy of six months because of tuberculosis, he was sent to New Mexico, later moving to Denver where he concentrated on lithography.

Early in 1912 he married sculptress Ina Sizer Davis and moved to Santa Fe permanently. In 1915 the Panama–California International Exposition in San Diego awarded him the Grand Prize and Gold Medal for his murals in the Indian Arts Building, and from then on he was recognized as a serious artist of archetypal Indian figures, one of which, Cui Bono?, hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe.

He died in Santa Fe on February 12, 1934.

Additional material is to be found in Folder 34, Part One of the Jamison Galleries Collection, Box 60 in the Archives. See also Ina Sizer David Cassidy Collection in Mics. No. 3, Box 171 in the Archives.

From the guide to the Inventory of the Gerald Cassidy Collection, 1910-1977, (Museum of Fine Arts Library and Archives)