4.6.25

Shock Art

By Lily Parker ’23/25

Hailing from a founding family of Fairmount College, Ruth Eleanor Graves was born in 1884 to Walter Graves, member of the college’s board of trustees, and Mary, who organized the Fairmount Library Club. While at Fairmount, Ruth studied under Elizabeth Sprague, who described her as showing “intense earnestness in everything pertaining to art.”

Graves continued honing her skills at the Art Institute of Chicago, and, later, at the Art Students League of New York. She would eventually board the S.S. “Saint John,” making her way to Paris, where her works would be featured in the acclaimed Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. While in France, she also made the acquaintance of Eric Blair, more easily recognized by his nom de plume, George Orwell.

The legacy of Fairmount College’s first professional artist bears vestiges on Wichita State’s campus, from the first issue of Parnassus, for which Graves was the publication’s art editor and artist behind its gold leaf illustration of Mount Parnassas on the cover, to the WSU Foundation and Alumni Engagement itself, where hangs her gossamer interpretation of Paris from behind a spire of the Notre Dame cathedral, a painting – pictured at right – currently in the safekeeping and high regard of The Shocker magazine’s founding editor, Connie White.