WQED Weekly
The McClelland Sisters
Clip | 8m 54sVideo has Closed Captions
This segment features an interview with Sarah and Rachel McClelland.
This segment of WQED Weekly features an interview with Sarah and Rachel McClelland. Sarah talks about how she developed an interest in politics and women’s suffrage as women gained the right to vote. Rachel talks about her art career. They also discuss their upbringing in Shadyside in the late 1800s.
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WQED Weekly is a local public television program presented by WQED
WQED Weekly
The McClelland Sisters
Clip | 8m 54sVideo has Closed Captions
This segment of WQED Weekly features an interview with Sarah and Rachel McClelland. Sarah talks about how she developed an interest in politics and women’s suffrage as women gained the right to vote. Rachel talks about her art career. They also discuss their upbringing in Shadyside in the late 1800s.
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You and I quite a bit.
And we celebrated all kinds of patriotic things like the 4th of July and, and, we took drawing lessons early before we even I think went to school.
We had a playhouse.
And the playhouse was the envy of every little girl in Pittsburgh.
So we were spending very much time climbing the cherry tree.
And there was much to envy off the McClelland girls as they were growing up in that big house in Shadyside.
Their father was a prominent physician, a founder of Shadyside Hospital, and the first physician to perform a cesarean operation in Pittsburgh.
Home was fully staffed with a variety of servants.
They went to the right schools and did an incredible amount of traveling.
- That one trip in when we were four and six, we were there, I think in Europe about nine months that time.
And we traveled every place, and we even went to, Africa.
Algiers, and Tunis and Morocco and so and whatever Switzerland I know we went to Switzerland.
It was in the mid 1890s when the McClelland girls were still in their pre-teens, that it became obvious that they would have different interests.
We went together little drawing classes, and then she dropped it, and I just kept on.
When did you realize, you were you were indeed an artist.
I don't think I ever thought I was.
It just sort of happened that I wanted to, needed to do it.
Well, I this is something that is typical of the subjects we had.
And we went through various stages, and this is the one that I found which was worthy of being framed.
Now, this is this is a watercolor?
- This is a watercolor.
And it was done when?
- In about 1900.
While the two sisters were going to prep school and later boarding school in New York, the differences in their interests became more obvious.
They were young and beautiful and involved in the social world, but Rachel was feeling the tug of what was to become a lifelong interest in painting, while Sarah was becoming a political activist.
When women started to vote in 1920, I happened to get to a meeting of the, Allegheny County League of Women Voters.
And, I knew Mrs., Gail Miller and this is Sam Smith, and, I don't know how I got there.
And, so, I joined it, and it was an interesting time because 1920, because it was new.
The whole thing was new for women.
It was new for women, the whole matter of politics.
They'd only gotten the vote in 1920.
And four years later, Sarah became a pioneer of sorts, deciding to run for the state legislature.
I had a pretty good candidacy.
I went every place I went and visited some of the wild politicians.
Well, we were for, honesty in government and, schools.
Yes, we were for schools and we were, against child labor.
The general issues that I would say, come up in almost all campaigns.
There were three campaigns for the legislature in the mid 20s and early 30s.
She lost all of them, but not without a fight.
All of this early political activism would lead one to believe that maybe Sarah was a feminist ahead of her time.
But predictable is one thing Sarah is not.
I never was, an ardent suffrage person.
Some of the people in those days were rather, rather radical, and they claim that they had to be in order to get somewhere.
Then, most of them, I would say, were rather intelligent women, though, women of responsibility.
But they they said, we've got to, show things around in order to be heard.
While Sarah was being heard in local politics, Rachel was appearing more and more on the local art scene and throughout all the politicking and painting in the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, there was travel, lots of it, dozens of trips abroad, and not just to all the standard places, but exotic places too, like South Africa, India, Katmandu, Iceland and Norway.
But all the while, Rachel was still painting.
After graduating from Carnegie Tech, there was a brown period.
And then a period in which she explored light, as in this self-portrait.
And then for a time, much of her work bore a striking resemblance to that of Van Gogh.
Of course, I'm not grand like he is.
I think I had place, but I have something that he was considered wonderful for.
She is perhaps best known for the realistic style she used in the mid 30s.
During this period she captured the look and feel of Pittsburgh.
Now that was a claim that I have the gift of loving the city.
Its my city and I knew what it looked like.
Now my sister says that those paintings dont do anything for her.
And I say you're artist doesn't care what you think.
She hasn't painted much in the past 3 or 4 years.
But that's not to say that she and Sarah still aren't quite active.
Their idea of growing old gracefully just doesn't include sitting at home reliving the good old days.
There are still weekly shopping trips, lunch downtown, travel, lectures at Carnegie Institute, church services on Sunday and of course, the weekly sewing circle at Shadyside Presbyterian.
I like yellow better, but orange yellow I like.
Lets see what we have.
Is this a good one?
My name is Sarah.
Sarah.
S-A-R-A-H.
Sarah.
Yes There's a Sarah in the Bible, yes.
You've been together all your life?
Practically all except the time I was married, and out of the house for a few years.
So how many?
How many years would you say?
All the time?
70.
Oh, a lot 80.
About 80.
That's a long time for two people to be together.
Yes, we have been.
Well, we, we get along quite well.
We scrap a little, but we we get along quite well.
What do you scrap about?
Nothing.
Yes thats usually it.
If it's worth while, we don't scrap.
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