Eagle's Nest Art Colony - History

History

The Eagle's Nest Art Colony Association was founded in 1898 by American sculptor Lorado Taft on the bluffs flanking the east bank of the Rock River, overlooking Oregon, Illinois. The colony was populated by Chicago artists, all members of the Chicago Art Institute or the University of Chicago art department, who gathered in Ogle County to escape the summer heat of Chicago.

The colony was started by eleven men, all artists, architects and art lovers affiliated with Taft in Chicago. The original members were: Taft, Ralph Clarkson, Oliver Dennett Grover, Charles Francis Browne, Henry B. Fuller, Hamlin Garland, Horace Spencer Fiske, James Spencer Dickerson, Allen Bartlit Pond, Irving Kane Pond and Clarence Dickerson. The original members first lived in tents at the colony, later, after the association's constitution was written, charter and regular members were allowed to build summer homes.

The group began their search for a summer reprieve from Chicago a few years before the site along the Rock River was chosen. Their first colony, at Bass Lake, Indiana, ended after a malaria outbreak. As the colony founders searched for a home for their colony Chicago attorney and patron of the arts Wallace Heckman purchased the land that would eventually become the Eagle's Nest Colony in 1898. Taft and his peers looked toward Wisconsin after leaving Bass Lake, but Heckman invited the group to his home in Ogle County for the Fourth of July. Heckman offered to let the group set up camp there and they signed a lease for the site the same week. The lease provided 15 acres (6.1 ha) of land for US$1 per year with the stipulation that each colony member give a free lecture or demonstration in the area.

Other famous writers and artists who visited the colony include: James H. Breasted, Charles R. Crane, I.K. Friedman, George Barr McCutcheon, John T. McCutcheon, Harriet Monroe, William Vaughn Moody, Elia Peattie, Lucy Fitch Perkins, Bert Leston Taylor, Nellie Walker, and Donald Peattie.