Edith Goetz was born into a life of privilege. She grew up on her family’s estate in Bedford Hills, New York with her mother and her brother (concert musician and composer Sherwin Day). Her father William Day was a New York advertising man and Madison Avenue legend. Her parents, separated for most of her life, also maintained (albeit separate) New York apartments, her mother at the Sherry Netherland and her father at the Barclay Hotel. When home from boarding school Edith enjoyed a genteel country life amongst her horses and her father’s breeding kennels. She was also consumed by drawing. After one year at Smith College she announced to her parents that she was moving to New York to study at the Art Students League and National Academy of Design. She studied with Sidney Dickinson, Charles Chapman and Charles Courtney Curran. Receiving little support from her parents she also went to work as a fashion illustrator for an ad agency and roomed with a new friend who was a Radio City Music Hall Rockette.
In this almost movie story lifestyle the stage was set for an event that would change her life forever. In 1942 she met a young, handsome and talented artist who had just moved to New York form Prior Creek, Oklahoma. At a student party Edith hosted in Bedford Hills, Richard Goetz mounted the wildest horse in the stable, rode him around the coral and then showed her his western horsemanship by making him “buck”. Edith fell in love.
Soon after, Richard Goetz enlisted in the Army Medical Corps and served a long hard tour in the European theater. Upon his return he married Edith at New York City Hall. They packed his newly purchased (but well used) Cadillac and drove straight to Oklahoma City where they both vowed to live the life of artists; “never working for any on else”.
Their struggle was intensified by the fact that Edith bore six children and Oklahoma was hardly an art mecca. Teaching, portrait painting and infrequent painting sales kept the Goetz household afloat. It took almost twenty years for financial success to finally reward their efforts. Together they owned and operated art schools in Oklahoma City, Santa Fe, New Mexico and Malden Bridge, New York. Where Richard Goetz focused mainly on oil painting (still Lifes especially), Edith developed into a fine pastelist. Portraits, especially of children, and figure painting were where she found her greatest strength. It should also be noted that the children of the Goetz household were all encouraged to study music and art. Today three of the six are professional painters including Mary Anna Goetz.
In the late 1970’s with the youngest of her brood in college Edith reminded her husband of a pledge he made long ago “ when the children are raised we are moving back to New York”. Dick Goetz resisted, argued and then refused. Edith packed her car and left Oklahoma for good re-settling in the family home in Westchester County. One year later her husband reluctantly followed.
Back in New York Richard Goetz took a teaching position at their old school “The League” and Edith pursued her career with entirely new subject matter. For a period she concentrated on dance. Arrangements were made for her to sketch at the practice studios at Carnegie Hall. It was during this period the pastel exhibited here was painted.
In the early 1980’s she was given the news that she had cancer. She continued her art career and assembled the finest exhibit of her life, hosted by the Grand Central Art Galleries in 1986. Six months later, after a lifetime of struggle and true achievement in her personal and professional life, Edith Goetz died, happy to have spent her remaining years in the old cider mill that had been converted into studio/living space on her beloved family homestead in Bedford Hills. -JC