Gerald O. Cassidy

Best known as a painter of the American Southwest, Cassidy was born in Kentucky and raised in Cleveland. He studied with Frank Duveneck at the Institute of Mechanical Arts, before moving to New York to study at the Art Students League. He worked at an engraving firm in New York. After contracting pneumonia, Cassidy traveled to Albuquerque for his health. He was fascinated by the area and by 1912 he had settled in Santa Fe, becoming an early member of the artists' colony there. He took up mural painting and was working on a WPA mural when he contracted lead poisoning and died.