Untitled (Abandoned Colorado Mining Camp)
Year 1954
Artist Muriel Sibell Wolle (1898–1977, American)
Media watercolor and crayon on paper
Dimensions 9 5/8 x 11 5/8 inches
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Muriel Sibell graduated from the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts (today’s Parsons School of Design) in 1920 with diplomas in advertising and costume design and also received a BS in art education from New York University. In 1926 she came to Colorado and began teaching at the University of Colorado Boulder. She headed the Fine Arts Department from 1927 to 1947 and would stay on the faculty until her retirement in 1966. At CU she designed sets and costumes for theater productions and in 1930 received an MA in English literature for a thesis on Shakespearian costume design. It was in this pursuit that she met her future husband, Francis Wolle, a CU English professor and one of the founders of CU Theatre; they married in 1945. She was known nationally for her depictions of mining camps and ghost towns throughout the West and authored and illustrated several books on the subject, including Ghost Cities of Colorado and Stampede to Timberline. She was a member of the Boulder Artists’ Guild and helped organize the Prospectors, a group of like-minded CU faculty who came together to exhibit and promote their own brand of Regionalism based on the Western landscape. The year after her death the University of Colorado Board of Regents named the Fine Arts building on campus for her, which stood until the 90-year-old building was replaced by the new Visual Arts Complex in 2008.
Not currently on view
Signature Signed "SIBELL WOLLE '54" lower right corner
Credit Line Collection Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art
Accession Number 2011.0126
