Jessie Dewey Cutting (Richardson)

by Madge Richardson Walsh, 2001

Jessie Dewey Cutting was born in San Francisco on November 5, 1895, in the apartment building her grandfather Cutting built next door to his home (both were still standing in the 1980s). Jessie was the third of five children, with two older sisters and two younger brothers. Her parents were not particularly happy at having another girl; when her proud father had rhapsodized in the family Bible over the birth of the first two girls, endowing them with lovely names — Marjorie Adele, Ida Mary — number three was recorded simply as "another girl." No mellifluous name for her, either: she was named Jessie after her mother. 

The Cutting home was in Honolulu, where her father, Eugene Cutting, worked as a sugar broker. When Jessie was about 11, and after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, they moved permanently to the mainland. Her mother had made regular visits to San Francisco to have her children; all these trips except the last were made in sailing ships.

In the Bay Area, they had a house on Nace Avenue in Piedmont, and Jesse went to the Piedmont Avenue School. 

Another disappointment developed: Jessie was born with congenital bilateral hip dysplasia in which the hip fails to make a socket for the thigh bone, and could not walk until a specialist operated on her when she was three. For one hip, the operation was successful; the other was not so, and she always walked with a limp. In her later years, arthritis compounded the pain, and her movements were restricted and she tired easily.  

This was not a period where women were encouraged to go to college, but Jessie persuaded her parents to let her attend what was then the California School of Arts And Crafts. This was during the tenure of Frederick Meyer, of Perham Nahl, and Xavier Martinez. Despite little support for her work, she did finish school, and did her practice teaching in art at University High School in Oakland, and then went into commercial art. She illustrated such new clothing fashions for Capwell’s department store sale brochures. 

Capwell's Advertisement, Oakland Tribune, Oct. 13, 1922

We have two of her oil paintings, one a still life exercise, the other the tawny hills and oak trees in the Piedmont uplands. While her active art career was brief, she remained a wonderful teacher, as her patience was infinite.

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Jessie died in 1984; in a gesture of his deep love for her, Russell established a scholarship at her alma mater, which is now known as the California College of the Arts. The Jessie Cutting Richardson Memorial Scholarship is awarded annually to 1-3 full-time students who are either U.S. citizens or eligible noncitizens and who demonstrate financial need and academic merit at CCA. Her family continue to donate to the fund so that her memory may remain alive in the hearts and hands of its many recipients.