Danish Church, San Francisco 1930 - 1948

Marguerite Redman Dorgeloh made this drawing of a Danish Church in San Francisco with graphite on paper. The drawing captures a place of worship embedded within the urban environment of San Francisco. Dorgeloh's choice of subject and her representational style is indicative of regionalist art, a popular movement in American art between World War I and World War II. Artists turned away from European abstraction and instead focused on the representation of everyday American life, often celebrating the virtues of rural communities and small-town culture. Dorgeloh’s image creates meaning through visual codes typical of the regionalist aesthetic, such as an emphasis on the specifics of place. Her social and geographical context, as a California artist working in the first half of the 20th century, shaped her interest in depicting local landmarks with a realist approach. The drawing can be situated within a broader cultural movement that valued regional identity and the unique character of American places. To understand Dorgeloh's work better, we might look into the archives of California art institutions and examine the cultural policies that promoted regionalism during this period. The meaning of this art is contingent on its social and institutional context, and the historian's role is to bring that context to light.