Anne Poor

At 84 years old, Anne Poor physical status not available right now. We will update Anne Poor's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

In the 1930s, Poor aided her stepfather, Henry Varnum Poor, in painting murals for the United States Justice Department and the Conservation of American Wildlife for the Department of the Interior, located in Washington D.C. She also assisted him with a commission by the Pennsylvania State University, paying tribute to the university's founding and the evolution of its land-grant mission of teaching, research, and service— completed in 1940.

Poor's skills were recognized independently from her father when she received her own Section of Painting and Sculpture mural commission for the Depew, New York post office in 1941, and the Gleason, Tennessee post office in 1942. The mural over the Depew post office is titled Beginning the Day and features a scene of mostly men interacting and conducting business. It has been described by scholar Sylvia Moore that this particular mural showcases Piero della Francesca's influence on Poor with the figures clustered together in small carefully balanced groups.

In Tennessee, the mural Gleason Agriculture was one of the last murals painted in the state for the Treasury Section. The composition illustrates Gleason's sweet potato industry with workers preparing baskets for shipping and the Gleason railroad depot in the background. Poor also painted green leaves around the frame signaling prosperity for the community.

Due to her success in these murals, in 1948 Poor won the Edwin Austin Abbey Memorial Fellowship which included a grant that enabled her to study in Italy and Greece.

The decision to become involved with the war efforts was easily made with her brother and many friends already in the service, as well as both parents aiding in their own way; Henry Varnum Poor was a member of the artist war record project, and Bessie Breuer wrote radio scripts for the Office of War Information.

Beginning her service in the Women's Army Corps as a photographic technician at Luke Air Field, Arizona, Poor initiated a drawing class for convalescents at the post hospital. However, in an interview given later in life, Poor lamented that the Army only wanted women to be in secretarial positions, nothing more.

On detached service in New York City, Poor would continue her study of art. Over weekends, she traveled to Washington D.C by train, where she used her mother's connections with The Pentagon to further her dreams of being assigned overseas. Bessie Breuer's literary agent, Bernice Baumgarten, happened to be married to James Gould Cozzens, first employed under the U.S. Army Air Forces and then by the USAAF Office of Information Services. He sympathized with Poor's wishes to join a B-29 bombing mission over Tokyo and arranged for her to join under the Women's Army Corps. However, when she arrived at LaGuardia Field to report for duty it was discovered that Oveta Culp Hobby, the director of the WAC, had denied her permission to go abroad due to the lack of toilet facilities for her use on the ship. Instead, Poor was assigned to Fort Totten, a small permanent army installation situated on land across the bay from LaGuardia Field. Although it is not known what her role consisted of during the day, at nights she joined a group of army personnel driving over to Mitchell Field. The group would meet incoming planes loaded with war casualties flown in directly from the Battle of the Bulge— the largest and bloodiest single battle fought by the U.S. in WWII. In her journal, she described the experience of watching the wounded unloaded by forklift, transferred to ambulances headed to the Field Hospital, before finally being transferred to hospitals across the country for more specialized medical treatment. It is here at Mitchel Field that Poor experienced first-hand the atrocities of war. After such nights, she would recreate these experiences in her sketchbook. It was also around this time that Poor had her first painting exhibited, a small landscape of San Francisco, in the 1942 "Artists for Victory show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It is unclear whether she was officially a part of the Army Art Program with female artists Marion Greenwood, Lucia Wiley, and Doris Rosenthal. However, it seems incredibly likely as her father, Henry Varnum Poor, was the head of the War Art Unit under the Corps of Engineers and led a group of artists in Alaska. Regardless, the Army Art Program ended in 1943 to eliminate what was deemed an unnecessary war expenditure. Instead, Poor's dream of sketching the war abroad was made possible by Fortune magazine and their request for her to illustrate a feature article for the Air Transport Command. In order to be granted the freedom to travel anywhere, at any time, and with no conditions attached, Captain Cunningham had Poor discharged from the Women's Army Corps before she set off to the Pacific Theater.

During this time, Poor began to create her most emotional and thought-provoking works depicting wounded soldiers, make-shift operation rooms, and psychiatric patients suffering from the horrors of war. While in Manila, Philippines, she specifically sketched patients with both physical and psychiatric wounds. Addressing a doctor in charge of the psychiatric ward, he expressed to Poor, "Most people in familiar circumstances can deal with stress, but the emotional trauma of war destroys their ability to cope."

Being rather adventurous, Poor continued her travels to China, a direct disobeyment for leaving her assigned theater of operations. After noticing a group of Chinese soldiers in the Manila Airport terminal, Poor found herself joining the crew. Landing in Kunming after an eventful experience of a failed propeller, the crew asked her to join the rest of their journey of flying around the world, ending in New York. However, Poor turned the offer down, describing how she did not desire to fly The Hump, the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains, which was extremely dangerous and made more difficult by a lack or absence of reliable charts, radio navigation aids, and weather information.

Once finishing her tour of duty, Poor returned home and submitted all of her work— sketches and paintings– to her boss Lafarge, an officer with the Air Transport Command. However, for reasons unknown, the U.S. Army rejected her work, granting Poor the ability to exhibit and show her wartime creations.

Winning the Edwin Austin Abbey Memorial Fellowship in 1948 for her successful murals allowed Poor to study in both Italy and Greece. She returned from the trip two years later with suitcases full of sketchbooks containing watercolors and ink creations. Although this trip was conducted shortly after the end of WWII, a published book of her Grecian sketches did not come to fruition until 1964 with the collaborative efforts of author Henry Miller. Accompanying Poor's artwork, Miller gave detailed memories coinciding with each illustration. He stated in the book:

It appears that Poor's and Miller's relationship began in Paris, France. In 1937 she studied under painter Abraham Rattner who happened to be close friends with Miller.

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