A noteworthy Foy relative was Frances Foy (1890-1963), a second cousin of my grandmother, Emily Foy Biggins. Frances and Emily were great granddaughters of Thomas Foy who had a farm in the Partry Mountains in County Mayo, Ireland. Frances' grandfather, Thomas Foy (1830-1903), lived on O'Brien Street in Holy Family parish on the near west side of Chicago.). Growing up we had in our house several paintings of flowers by Frances Foy. And I remember the attic full of paintings in her house in Chicago where we lived in the Summer of 1944.

Peter and Marilyn Carroll Biggins in front of "Advent of the Pioneers, 1851" painted in 1938 by Frances Foy. In East Lobby of Chicago Main Post Office, 433 W. Harrison Street. Photo by Mikal J. Sutherlin, U.S. Postal Service, July 2008.

Mural in the Chicago Main Post Office. Today, if you go to the Main Post Office on Harrison Street in Chicago, you will see a 15-foot mural painted by Francis Foy in 1938 titled “Advent of the Pioneers, 1851.” My wife Marilyn discovered this mural while browsing at a gift shop in the Chicago Cultural Center in the old Chicago Public Library on Michigan Avenue in 2006. She picked up a book entitled A Guide to Chicago’s Murals by Mary Lackritz Gray published in 2001. There it was—a picture of the Frances Foy mural.

In 2008, my wife Marilyn and I paid another visit to the Chicago Main Post Office. This time Marilyn suggested we visit the Postmaster. We phoned up from the lobby and were thrilled when Musette Henley, customer relations coordinator, came down to meet us and took us up to meet the postmaster, Gloria E. Tyson, who was very gracious and discussed efforts to preserve murals in post offices around the country. Musette gave us pins with stamps on them and introduced us to Mikal J. Sutherlin, communications specialist, who took us back down to the East Lobby and took the excellent photographs seen on this page.

The Chicago Main Post Office was completed in 1997, replacing the old one across the street at 404 W. Harrison Street. The old one had been built in 1921 and expanded in 1932. Congress Parkway runs underneath the old one.

The Frances Foy mural was commissioned by the United States Department of Treasury, Section of Fine Arts, for the Chestnut Street Post Office, a new Art Deco building at 830 N. Clark Street, where it hung for almost fifty years opposite a mural entitled "Great Indian Council, Chicago—1833" by Gustaf Dalstrom, husband of Frances Foy. Both murals were done in 1938 and are 15' x 5' oil on canvas. The Chestnut Street Post Office was converted to a movie theater (Chestnut Station Theaters) in 1983, separating the two murals. The Gus Dalstrom mural was moved to the one-story Loop Station Post Office designed by Mies Van Rohe in the Federal Center at 219 S. Clark Street. The Frances Foy mural disappeared from view for 14 years until it was hung at the new Chicago Main Post office in 1997. Perhaps some day the two murals will be reunited.

"Advent of the Pioneers, 1851"  Mural 15' x 5' oil on canvas painted in 1938 by Frances Foy, second cousin of Emily Foy Biggins. In East Lobby of Chicago Main Post Office, 433 W. Harrison Street. Commissioned by U.S. Department of Treasury, Section of Fine Arts, for the Chestnut Street Post Office, where it hung opposite the mural below by Gustaf Dalstrom, husband of Frances Foy. Photo by Mikal J. Sutherlin, U.S. Postal Service. Large image.

"Great Indian Council, Chicago—1833"  Mural 15' x 5' oil on canvas painted in 1938 by Gustaf Dalstrom. In Loop Station Post Office designed by Mies Van Rohe, 219 S. Clark Street. Commissioned by U.S. Department of Treasury, Section of Fine Arts, for the Chestnut Street Post Office, where it hung opposite the mural above by Frances Foy, wife of Gustaf Dalstrom. Large image.

Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1933, Frances and her husband Gus Dalstrom were among contemporary artists featured in a show, "Paintings & Prints By Chcago Artists" at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. The museum was founded in 1931 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney after her collection of art was turned down by the Metropilitan Museum of Art.

New Deal/WPA Art Project. On May 6, 1935, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created to help provide economic relief to the citizens of the United States who were suffering through the Great Depression. The Federal Art Project (FAP) was one of the divisions of the WPA created under Federal Project One. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had made several attempts prior to the FAP to provide employment for artists on relief. The first was the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) which operated from December 1933 to June 1934. Frances Foy was a member of the Region 10 committee , which alllocated funds for Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The Treasury Department Section of Painting and Sculpture which was created in 1934 after the demise of the PWAP. However, it was the FAP which provided the widest reach, creating over 5,000 jobs for artists and producing over 225,000 works of art for the American people. For more on the New Deal/WPA art project, including a number of works by Frances Foy and her husband Gus Dalstrom, see New Deal/WPA Art Project.

Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington contains works by Frances Foy, including Frances Foy-Mother's Day, and her husband Gus Dalstrom.

In 1987, the Frances Foy and Gustaf Dalstrom papers, 1909-1961 were donated to the Smithsonian Research Collections by their son Lars Dalstrom.

Newspaper Articles. There were three lengthy articles on Frances Foy in the Chicago newspapers.

• The Chicago Daily News of Saturday, August 24, 1935, was part of a series on "Artists of Chicago" by C. J. Bulliett. This article mentions that the vaudevillian Edward Fitzgerald knew Frances Foy's father, James Foy (1861-1943), and adopted his surname because it was short. See How Eddie Foy Got His Name.
• The Chicago Tribune of Sunday, October 10, 1943, was about Frances and her husband Gus Dalstrom with the headline "Art, Marriage Double Ties for North Side Pair."
• The Chicago Tribune of Sunday, January 12, 1964, followed her death and was entitled "Old Town Remembers Frances Foy."

M. Christine Schwartz Collection. The M. Christine Schwartz Collection consists of sixty-one paintings that represent the work of forty-eight artists associated with Chicago between the mid-nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. The collection is presented in a website that includes a compact essay about each of the paintings (Frances Foy's 1941 "Portrait of a Girl") and a brief biographical sketch of each artist. The biographical sketch of Frances Foy is as follows.

Associated with Chicago’s community of progressive artists early in her career, Frances Foy was a commercially successful illustrator, painter, and printmaker whose works include portraits, still lifes, and scenes of everyday life. Foy was born in Chicago and raised in suburban Oak Park. At school, she demonstrated a talent for drawing, and she spent a summer at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts studying with portraitist Wellington Reynolds. Foy began working as a fashion illustrator before enrolling in evening classes at the Art Institute of Chicago’s school, where she again worked under Reynolds. She was influenced by visiting instructors George Bellows and Randall Davey, who inspired a generation of young “rebels” among Chicago’s artists. Among them was painter Gustaf Dalstrom, whom Foy married in 1923.

Foy began exhibiting her paintings as early as 1922, when her work first appeared in the No-Jury Society of Artists exhibitions, an alternative to the Art Institute’s annual shows. By 1926, the Art Institute was displaying her canvases as well. Foy and Dalstrom exhibited with the so-called Fifty-seventh Street art colony, and both were elected directors of the No-Jury Society. Foy’s work was featured in solo exhibitions sponsored by Chicago Woman’s Aid in 1927 and at the Romany Club the next year. Also in 1928, she and her husband traveled throughout Europe. Foy received a gold medal from the Chicago Society of Artists in 1929, the year she was given a small solo exhibition at the Art Institute. She received several awards in the museum’s annual exhibitions during the early 1930s. J. Z. Jacobson included her in his 1932 book Art of Today: Chicago 1933, a compendium of Chicago’s modernist artists.

In the 1930s Foy painted several post office murals under the auspices of the U.S. Treasury Department’s New Deal relief programs, and she served on the technical committee of the federal Public Works of Art Project. Floral still-lifes dominated Foy’s mature work as a painter in oils and watercolors. Alongside her husband in the studios of Hull House, Foy also learned to make etchings. In the 1930s the couple collaboratively illustrated an anatomy book. Their paintings of the Lincoln Park neighborhood, where they lived for many years, were featured in a joint exhibition at the Chicago Historical Society in 1948. Foy’s papers are preserved along with Dalstrom’s in the collection of the Archives of American Art.

Frances Foy 1922. Photo from 1922 passport.

Gus Dalstrom and Frances Foy, 1923 wedding photo. The two met while studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during World War I.

Frances Foy, from a photograph in the Chicago Sunday Tribune, Aug. 8, 1948.

Leslie and Emily Foy Biggins and daughter Kathleen Biggins, by Emily's second cousin Frances Foy, unsigned, circa 1925