Lu Duble

From 1918 to 1937, Duble was head of the sculpture program at Bennett Junior College in Millbrook, New York.^[4] She also taught sculpture classes at Brearley School, Dalton School, Greenwich House, and Montclair Art Museum.^[2] She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1937 and 1938, to study art and sculpture in Haiti.^[5][6] Another travel fellowship, from the Institute of International Education, sent her to Mexico from 1942 to 1944, where she made sculptures^[7] and studied Mayan art.^[8]

Duble's best known works were human figures or heads, worked in stone, cement, and terracotta.^[7] Her sculpture, "Calling the Loa, Haiti" won the Anna Hyatt Huntington Prize in 1938,^[9] and "Last Migration" won the Speyer Prize in 1952.^[10] She had work in the fiftieth anniversary show of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors in 1939.^[11] In 1940, Duble showed her sculptures from Haiti at the Dayton Art Institute;^[12] local arts editor Merab Eberle found the show's "voodooistic" theme disturbing, but agreed that Duble had "rhythmic sense and no small degree of ability to impart power."^[13] She was part of a three-woman show, at Grand Central Art Galleries in 1947, with Cornelia Chapin and Marion Sanford.^[14] She "tackles themes that are deeply felt, in forms that are impressionistically modeled and full of dramatic tensions," wrote a Philadelphia reviewer in 1950, adding "Lu Duble's work must be respected but can't always be enjoyed."^[15]

She was a member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors from 1937,^[16] a fellow of the National Sculpture Society, elected in 1937,^[17] and a member of the National Academy of Design from 1942.^[18][19] She was part of a group of women artists called informally "the Guild ladies", including Dorothy Dehner, Helen Wilson, Rhys Caparn and Helena Simkhovitch.^[20] Among her students were artists Ray Eames^[21] and Mercedes Matter.^[22]

Davies married twice, first in 1917 to Jesse Clyde Duble, and second to Alfred Geiffert Jr., a landscape architect. She was widowed when Geiffert died in 1957.^[23] She spent summers in Woodstock, New York in her later years. She died in 1970, in Woodstock, aged 74 years.^[8] She was survived by her sister, Gwen, also an artist.^[10]