TEC 5 Corporal US Army, Janet Lippincott

Born: May 16, 1918

Died: May 2, 2007

Technician Fifth Grade, Corporal Lippincott served in the Women’s Army Corps from August 1943 to September 1945. Most Technicians were addressed by the rank of corporal. She was attached to General Eisenhower’s staff in the press corps, first in Britain and then in France. When General Patton charged into Eisenhower’s office, Lippincott, according to her memory, was in a position to tell him “to take a seat and keep his mouth shut.”¹ In an interview late in her life, Lippincott remembered meeting Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.² While the war had its lighter moments, it was not easy for Lippincott. In London, she broke her back after falling several floors in a building hit during the Blitz. After hearing about the Normandy landing on D-Day, she was to suffer nightmares off and on for the rest of her life.³

Most women claimed to join the WAC for either patriotism or adventure, Lippincott did not. In her diary, she wrote:

 “It is more a sense of wanting to belong to my generation in every sense of the word, to be in no way apart from them because I seemed apart from my family circle, a non-conformist in a pattern to which I inwardly rebelled. Here, I am just a number, lost in a mass of khaki-clad females and under Army regulations. I am part of a unit to remain so until such time as I am honorably discharged. There are no regrets, and when it’s over, and done, it shall be behind me forever.” ⁴

When crossing the Atlantic on a troop transport, she noted that the gun crew on her ship were not old enough to have learned to shave yet. An observation that worried her.⁵

Janet Lippincott was born to William Jackson and Dorothy McCord Lippincott in Manhattan, New York on May 16, 1918. Hers was a life of privilege; she spent part of her childhood with her family in France, attending a private convent school. When she returned home, she was sent to the Todhunter School.⁶ At fifteen, her mother enrolled her in the Artist Student’s League where she studied full-time after high school. ⁷ Lippincott wasn’t thinking of art as a career at that time, in fact, her father had already published three books of her poetry.⁸ It wasn’t until after the war, with her GI Bill money, that Lippincott decided to study art seriously. First with Emil Bisttram, who told her she was wasting her time.⁹ She moved on to the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center to study with Emerson Woelffer and Mary Chenoweth, then on to the San Francisco Art Institute where she was introduced to Abstract Expressionism. This was an art form that would attract the color-blind Lippincott.¹⁰ In 1957 she moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. There, she not only was eventually accepted as a painter, she also became part of the John Sloan Drawing Group, did lithography with the Tamarind Institute at the University of Albuquerque, and cast bronze sculptures with the newly founded Shidoni Foundry in Tesuque, New Mexico.¹¹

Lippincott had many showings of her work, especially in New Mexico. She was known to be inspirational to younger artists. Once, in the local grocery store, she found a young woman with an overloaded grocery cart and asked if she was having a party. The response was enthusiastic; the other shopper was Celia Rumsey who was thrilled to be opening her art exhibition alongside the established artist Lippincott, who she knew only by reputation, though now of course the opportunity to know her personally had come her way.¹² Lippincott was also a guest on PBS New Mexico’s Creative Process in 1968.¹³

These artistic outbursts ended later in life with Lippincott’s abilities limited to only small-scale watercolors due to the continuing problems from the injuries sustained in WW II.¹⁴ The last decade of Lippincott’s career was capped with winning the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and the Arts Achievement Award from the New Mexico Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.¹⁵

Lippincott passed away two weeks before her 89^th birthday.

Images & Documents

Notes:

1. “Janet Lippincott Artist’s Biography.” Modernist West. Biographies by Stan Cuba, Associate Consulting Curator, Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art. para. 3.
2. “Janet Lippincott Biography.” The Matthews Gallery. Video: https://www.thematthewsgallery.com/artists/192-janet-lippincott/video/

3, 4 & 5 Cook – Romero, Elizabeth. “Fearless Clarity.” Santa Fe New Mexican. Friday 18 May 2007. p. 40.

6. “Janet Lippincott Artist’s Biography.” Modernist West. Biographies by Stan Cuba, Associate Consulting Curator, Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art. para. 2.
7. “Janet Lippincott Biography.” The Matthews Gallery. para. 1.
8. Cook – Romero, Elizabeth. “Fearless Clarity.” Santa Fe New Mexican. Friday 18 May 2007. p. 40.
9. “Janet Lippincott Artist’s Biography.” Modernist West. Biographies by Stan Cuba, Associate Consulting Curator, Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art. para. 4 & 5.
10. Knight, Bob. “Janet Lippincott’s Art Intensely Personal Thing.” Santa Fe New Mexican. 17 March 1968. sec. D p.3.
11. “Janet Lippincott Biography.” The Matthews Gallery. para. 5.
12. Sawyer, David. “Chance Meeting of Divergent Artists.” Santa Fe New Mexican. 11 February 1983. p. 5.
13. “Channel Five Reports.” Albuquerque Journal. sec. A. p. 13.
14. “Janet Lippincott Artist’s Biography.” Modernist West. Biographies by Stan Cuba, Associate Consulting Curator, Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art. para. 11.
15. “Janet Lippincott Artist’s Biography.” Modernist West. Biographies by Stan Cuba, Associate Consulting Curator, Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art. para. 14.

Compiled by: A. D. McLean, MA, MLIS. Central New Mexico Community College, retired 2022.

Featured Image:

“Janet Lippincott.” Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/72874169/janet-lippincott: accessed 26 June 2023), memorial page for Janet Lippincott (16 May 1918–2 May 2007), Find a Grave Memorial ID 72874169, citing Santa Fe National Cemetery, Santa Fe, Santa Fe County, New Mexico, USA; Maintained by John Lippincott (contributor 48058151).