Melville T. Wire

Melville T. Wire

Wire, Melville T.

Macon 1877

Oregon

painter

printmaker

Northwest artist

Oregon artist

Melville Wire was born in Illinois and came to Oregon at age seven when his father became pastor of Salem's First Methodist Church. He began art classes at Willamette University with Marie Craig at this early age and continued until he was sixteen. It was under her influence that his love of drawing and painting began to emerge. His travels to Bend in 1896 resulted in many watercolors and sketches. Study for the ministry took him to Illinois, but upon graduation in 1902 he returned to Oregon. For sixty-one years, Melville Wire was a pastor of the Methodist Church of Oregon, and traveled the state painting and preaching. His lifetime artistic body of work reflects the diversity of the state.

In 1915 three of Wire's paintings were selected for exhibit at the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. He became a member of the Mutual Art Association in Portland and exhibited with them in 1914 and 1915. He was also a member of the American Artists Professional League and a charter member and active participant in the Oregon Society of Artists, garnering awards from them in 1931 and 1937. In 1935, encouraged by Gordon Gilkey, later curator of Prints and Drawings at the Portland Art Museum, Wire began studying etching with Eyler Brown at the University of Oregon. He was an outdoorsman who searched out secluded spots to sketch and paint. His preferred subject matter was the western landscape, and he was able to capture the spirit of the place in his oils, watercolors and later etchings.

Wire retired from the ministry in 1946 and continued his art full time. The Associated American Artists of New York produced a catalog of his works for publication and national distribution. He continued to paint two hours a day when he was in his late eighties until his death in 1966. His first wife, Bess Burgess Wire, was also an artist.

Artist biography reproduced with permission from the authors, Oregon Painters: the First Hundred Years (1859-1959), Ginny Allen and Jody Klevit.

Male

Student of: Eyler Brown (American, 1895-1966)

Associate of: Gordon W. Gilkey (American, 1912-2000)