Zulma Steele

Zulma Steele received her training at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boston Museum School, and the Pratt Institute, where she met Arthur Wesley Dow. At Dow’s encouragement, Steele and fellow artist Edna Walker joined the Byrdcliffe Colony, collaborating on floral designs for furniture. She later studied painting with Birge Harrison at Byrdcliffe and at the Art Students’ League summer school in Woodstock. Steele belonged to the National Arts Club, exhibiting alongside artists such as Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Abraham Walkowitz, and Marguerite and William Zorach. In the early 1920s, she traveled to France to study with André Lhote. She continued working in the studios of the large stone house near Woodstock until 1967.