The Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, will present an early fall exhibition of paintings and works on paper from the estate of Marjorie Eaton (1901-1986). Marjorie Eaton was born in Oakland, California. Her father, George Eaton was a doctor and her mother, Helen Morley, a pianist who died when Marjorie was only 2 ½ years old. The woman that was to become her surrogate mother was couturier Edith Cox, a woman of independent means. It was Edith Cox who took Marjorie on her first trip to Europe to visit Florence and Rome before she was 13 and impressed upon her “the early importance of the world.” 

Following her early education, Eaton went to Europe for the summer, touring museums and working in the Grand Charmiere in Paris. Eventually, Eaton would enroll in the School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) and in 1926, Eaton met Galka Scheyer. A modern art dealer from Germany who represented the die Blaue Reiter (the Blue Riders: Klee, Kandinsky, Jawlensky and Feininger), Scheyer encouraged Eaton to paint, promising her a show if she pursued her painting for three years. Encouraged and exhilarated by Scheyer, Eaton packed her things and traveled to the Southwest. Arriving in Taos in 1929, Eaton exclaimed, “It was a marvelous experience… I realized I had found my soul when I was out there…”  She began a relationship with Juan Mirabel, son of the Taos Pueblo Chief Geronimo (Jerry) Mirabal, and painted him during her three years in Taos. 

In 1931 and 1932, Eaton exhibited the works she completed in Taos with the San Francisco Art Association at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Her one-woman exhibition in February-March 1932 included two rooms with 35 paintings and drawings. Eaton would return to Taos briefly but soon found a new home in New York. Surrounded by some of the most important artists if the century, Eaton took Hans Hofmann’s class at the Art Student’s League, shared studio space with Louise Nevelson and became close friends with Diego Rivera, whom she would join, along with his wife, Frieda Kahlo for three years in Mexico.

The loss of her father would return Eaton to the states. Living in California, Eaton went on to have a very successful acting career in theater, film and television. Her credits include: the film Anna and the King of Siam with Rex Harrison, the Broadway play In the Summer House with Judith Anderson, the film Mary Poppins, and Bullitt with Steve McQueen. She had the lead role in Street Music at the age of 80. Marjorie Eaton passed away in Palo Alto, California in 1986.