Alice Cardelli Swett: The Comstock Painter of Dayton's Main Street

Part of The Artist Archive, Viridian Eclection's research library of artist biographies and signatures. See also the artist page and the Signature Index.

In the autumn of 1959, a Silver City widow took third prize in oil at the Nevada Artists' Association's Nevada Day exhibit for a canvas called "Yesterday." Her name was Mrs. Alice Cardelli, and the title suited her. She had married into one of the oldest ranching families on the Comstock, lost her husband young, and taken up the brush in country already thick with history. Over the next fifteen years she painted the canyons above Dayton, ran an antique shop and studio from a building on Main Street, and in the end signed her canvases with a second surname. Her name is barely recorded in the standard reference books. What follows is assembled from contemporary newspapers, cemetery and family records, and the collections of the Dayton Museum, and it is the fullest account of her life we have been able to establish.

Where the record is thin, we say so. Where other sources disagree with the documents, we set out the conflict rather than smoothing it over.

The Cardelli Family and the Ranch

Dayton sits at the mouth of Gold Canyon on the Carson River, and it has a fair claim to being the oldest settlement in Nevada. In 1849 Abner Blackburn, bound for California, found gold in the canyon, and by 1850 placer miners had settled at its mouth. The town took the name Dayton in 1861, after the surveyor John Day, and became the seat of Lyon County that November. With water from the Carson River it became the first major milling center of the Comstock, growing from 78 residents in 1860 to roughly 2,500 by 1865. The boom faded, the county seat moved to Yerington in 1911, and Dayton settled into the quieter life of a river and ranching town.

It was into that second Dayton that the Cardelli family put down roots. According to the Dayton Museum, the brothers Tancredi and Orlando Cardelli started a ranch in 1875 about five miles east of town. It grew to roughly 1,200 acres and stayed in family hands into the 1950s. Tancredi Cardelli (1854 to 1928) married Eugenia "Jennie" Lenzi (1874 to 1962), and their children were the generation that would tie the ranch to some of the best known names in northern Nevada:

1. Tetide Cardelli Perondi (1896 to 1952), wife of Pete Perondi and mother of Bert, Oliver and Alfred Perondi.
2. Clara Cardelli Raggio (1898 to 1996), wife of William J. Raggio Sr. and mother of William J. "Bill" Raggio (1926 to 2012), the Washoe County District Attorney who went on to become the longest serving member in the history of the Nevada State Senate.
3. Achille Italo Cardelli, born in Dayton on March 22, 1905.
4. Ida Cardelli Jurey (1906 to 2000).
5. Anita Cardelli Barker (1910 to 2010), whose obituary names Bert Perondi and Wm. J. Raggio as her nephews.
6. Stella Cardelli (1916 to 1921), who died in childhood.

Achille was the son who stayed with the land. Alice married him, though when and where is not yet established; no marriage record has been located, and her maiden name remains unknown. The 1962 deed discussed below gives her middle initial as M.

The Perondi family papers now held by the Dayton Museum include photographs and correspondence naming both Alice and Achille Cardelli, as well as an album catalogued under the subject "Cardelli Ranch." That album spans the 1920s to the 1990s, includes letters in Italian, and has not yet been reviewed for this article. It is the most promising unexamined source on her early life.

Widowhood

On January 12, 1946, Achille Cardelli died in a Reno hospital. He was forty. The Mason Valley News ran the story on its front page under the headline "Dayton Rancher Dies at Hospital," naming as survivors his wife, Mrs. Alice Cardelli of Dayton, and his mother, Eugenia. The Reno Evening Gazette notice of the same day listed his sisters as Tetide Perondi, Clara Raggio, Ida Jurey and Ann Barker, and gave his widow's residence as Reno. He was buried in the Old Section of the Dayton Cemetery.

The difference in residence between the two notices is small but worth noting. It may reflect a household that moved between ranch and city, or simply a reporter's shorthand. Either way, Alice was a widow by the start of 1946. The family continued to run the ranch into the 1950s.

Nothing in the record yet covers the twelve years between Achille's death and her first dated paintings. When she reappears, it is as an artist living in Silver City, the old Comstock town two miles up the canyon road from Dayton. Founded in 1859, Silver City had once been a staging point between the mines and the river mills, and it went into decline after the Virginia and Truckee Railroad bypassed it in 1869. By the 1950s it was a quiet place of old buildings, mine dumps and sagebrush, with the canyons she would paint on every side.

The Painter Emerges, 1958 to 1960

Her earliest dated works are two pictures now in the Dayton Museum, both from 1958 and both of the canyons she could see from her door. One is a watercolor of Six Mile Canyon (accession 2017.27.1). The other is an oil of Gold Canyon dated March 1958 (2017.27.2). The two canyons frame the Comstock: Gold Canyon runs from Gold Hill and Silver City down to Dayton, and Six Mile Canyon drops east from Virginia City. Both came to the museum as part of a "Cardelli Collection" donated by Richard Fleishmann.

Within eighteen months she was exhibiting in Reno. The Reno Evening Gazette of October 30, 1959 reported the Nevada Artists' Association's Nevada Day exhibit, in which third prize in oil went to Mrs. Alice Cardelli of Silver City for "Yesterday." Nevada Day marks statehood on October 31, 1864, and the association, founded in 1950, still holds a Nevada Day show today. It is the first public recognition of her work that we have found.

In April 1960 the Nevada State Journal listed her in the Nevada Art Gallery's April show. The Nevada Art Gallery, founded in Reno in 1931 by the University of Nevada professor James E. Church, was the forerunner of today's Nevada Museum of Art. Reno's art scene in these years was small and close knit, anchored by institutions such as the Nevada Art Gallery and the Latimer Art Club, established in 1921 by students of the plein air painter Lorenzo Latimer. We have found no record that Alice belonged to the Latimer club, but she worked in the same outdoor landscape tradition that it had kept alive in Reno for four decades.

Silver City Years and the Shop on Main Street

The 1960s record is sparse but consistent. A deed in the name of Alice M. Cardelli appears in the Nevada State Journal of November 20, 1962. The Mason Valley News refers to Alice Cardelli of Silver City in November 1963 and again in September 1964. In February 1965 the Nevada State Journal noted a showing of her work at Brundidge's Little Gallery.

By the end of the decade she had moved down the hill to Dayton. A Mason Valley News feature of July 16, 1971 places her at 47 Main Street, where she kept an apartment, a studio and an antique shop under one roof. The same article notes that Bert Perondi, her late husband's nephew, sold the building in 1969. Main Street was the old commercial heart of Dayton, and a dealer selling Comstock era furniture and objects alongside her own paintings of the surrounding canyons was offering visitors something coherent: the region's past and its present landscape in one room.

A postcard offered on eBay and described as a 1960 view of a Dayton "Art Gallery Antique Store" may show her premises. We have not been able to confirm that it does, and we do not rely on it here.

Marriage to Bill Swett and Imlay

On December 24, 1971 the Mason Valley News reported that Alice was now married to Bill Swett and that the couple planned to open a barn gallery in Imlay in February 1972. Imlay is a small railroad town in Pershing County, founded around 1907 on the Humboldt River, now at Exit 145 of Interstate 80 between Lovelock and Winnemucca. It was an unexpected place for a gallery, though not an artless one: in 1969 Frank Van Zant, who called himself Rolling Mountain Thunder, had begun building the folk art compound now known as Thunder Mountain Monument just outside town.

We have not yet found confirmation that the Imlay barn gallery opened, how long it operated, or whether Alice kept the Dayton shop at the same time. Nor have we established who Bill Swett was beyond his name, or the dates of Alice's later life and death. The Lovelock Review Miner for early 1972 is the next source to search.

Legacy and the Dayton Museum

Dayton remembered her. The Dayton Museum, housed in the town's 1865 schoolhouse, said to be the oldest in Nevada still on its original site, holds at least three of her paintings, and a 2023 account of the museum describes a second room featuring her work. Besides the two 1958 canyon pictures, the collection includes an oil of a couple walking away (2023.1.106), credited to "Bill Raggio (Alice's family)."

In December 2022 the Reno Gazette Journal reported on its front page that Dale Raggio had donated an oil by Alice to the museum, citing the 1992 local history Lyon County Reflections. Whether that gift and the work catalogued as 2023.1.106 are the same painting is not clear from the records we have read.

Reading the Signature

Her signature is the single most useful tool for dating her work, because it changed with her name.

CARDELLI

Works from her years as Mrs. Alice Cardelli, from the late 1950s until her remarriage, are signed with the surname alone in capital letters: CARDELLI. Every exhibition notice from 1959 to 1965 uses that name, and the 1958 museum pictures belong to this period.

Cardelli Swett

After her marriage to Bill Swett, reported in December 1971, she signed "Cardelli Swett" in upper and lower case, keeping the name under which she had built her reputation and adding the new one after it.

Dating by signature

1. A CARDELLI signature points to roughly 1958 to 1971.
2. A Cardelli Swett signature points to about 1971 or later.
3. The exact date of the marriage is not known, so a work signed Cardelli Swett could fall in 1971 itself. The December 1971 report is the earliest firm marker.
4. On our painting the signature is painted in oil in the lower right corner. Check placement against other examples before treating it as a rule.

Be aware that other painters named Cardelli, notably the Italian Raimondo Cardelli, appear in auction databases. A CARDELLI signature on a European subject is unlikely to be hers. Her subjects are almost always Nevada.

Style and Subjects

Alice Cardelli Swett painted the country she lived in. Her documented subjects are the canyon roads above Dayton, sagebrush flats, wildlife, and distant ranges, along with occasional figure subjects such as the couple in the Dayton Museum. A 2016 auction sale included a painting of a buffalo herd.

Her palette is restrained: muted earth tones, sage greens and browns, with distant hills often washed in lavender. That lavender reflects the real color of the western Nevada ranges in late light rather than a studio convention. Her handling is direct and unfussy, closer to the plein air tradition of Reno's mid century landscape painters than to any modernist trend. She worked in both oil and watercolor.

Where Her Work Is Today

1. Dayton Museum (Historical Society of Dayton Valley), Dayton, Nevada: Six Mile Canyon, watercolor, 1958; Gold Canyon, oil, March 1958; a couple walking away, oil; and the 2022 Raggio gift, if separate.
2. Perondi Collection, Dayton Museum: family photographs and papers naming Alice Cardelli, including the "Cardelli Ranch" album.
3. Private collections in northern Nevada; their number and whereabouts are not documented.
4. Viridian Eclection, Reno: the desert landscape described below.

The Market

Her market is small, regional and poorly documented. What we can verify:

1. In February 2016 the Reno Gazette Journal reported a Lightning Auctions sale that included her painting of a buffalo herd. No price was reported.
2. Her work has appeared on Proxibid under dates that cannot be correct (see below).
3. Our October 2026 searches of the major auction price databases found no records under her name.

With so few public sales, there is no reliable price history. Condition, subject, size and signature period matter more than any published comparable, and provenance from Dayton families adds real interest.

Myths and Corrections

"1943 to 2025"

An online auction listing gives her dates as 1943 to 2025. This is impossible. She was a widow by January 1946 and winning prizes as Mrs. Alice Cardelli in 1959. Those dates should be disregarded. Her actual birth and death dates are not yet established.

"Born and raised on the ranch"

Dayton Museum material describes her as born and raised on the Cardelli ranch. Cardelli was her married name, and the women born on the ranch were Achille's sisters. The description most likely confuses Alice with them. Until her maiden name is found, her birthplace is unknown.

Cousin or nephew?

She has been described as a cousin of Bert Perondi. Bert was the son of Tetide Cardelli Perondi, Achille's sister, which makes him Alice's nephew by marriage. Senator Bill Raggio, son of Clara Cardelli Raggio, stands in exactly the same relation.

"Ann" or "Anita" Barker

The 1946 obituary names a sister "Ann Barker." Later records give Anita Barker (1910 to 2010). These are the same person.

Our Painting

Our Desert Landscape, Oil on Canvas by Alice Cardelli Swett is a characteristic example of her later work. A flat of sagebrush and scattered scrub runs back to a band of lavender hills under an open sky, painted in muted earth tones, greens and browns. It is signed "Cardelli Swett" in the lower right, which places it after her marriage to Bill Swett, reported in December 1971. It is housed in a whitewashed Rococo Revival frame whose pale, carved surface suits the soft palette of the canvas.

It is the kind of picture she made for the people who came through her door in Dayton: an honest view of the country just outside, by someone who had lived in it for decades. You can see her other works as they come into the shop in our Alice Cardelli Swett collection.

Timeline

Sources

1. Reno Evening Gazette, January 12, 1946, p. 10: death of Achille Cardelli. Newspapers.com
2. Mason Valley News, January 18, 1946, p. 1: "Dayton Rancher Dies at Hospital." Newspapers.com
3. Reno Evening Gazette, October 30, 1959, p. 6: Nevada Artists' Association Nevada Day exhibit. Newspapers.com
4. Nevada State Journal, April 3, 1960, p. 27: Nevada Art Gallery April show. Newspapers.com
5. Nevada State Journal, November 20, 1962, p. 15: deed, Alice M. Cardelli.
6. Mason Valley News, November 22, 1963 and September 4, 1964.
7. Nevada State Journal, February 28, 1965, p. 2: Brundidge's Little Gallery. Newspapers.com
8. Mason Valley News, July 16, 1971, p. 4: 47 Main Street, Dayton. Newspapers.com
9. Mason Valley News, December 24, 1971, p. 11: marriage to Bill Swett and Imlay plans. Newspapers.com
10. Reno Gazette Journal, February 25 and 26, 2016, p. A2: Lightning Auctions sale.
11. Reno Gazette Journal, December 7, 2022, pp. A1 and A3: Raggio donation to the Dayton Museum.
12. Find a Grave: Achille Italo Cardelli, Dayton Cemetery. Memorial 88182320
13. Historical Society of Dayton Valley, online collections, including accessions 2017.27.1, 2017.27.2, 2018.27.3, 2023.1.106 and the Perondi Collection. daytonnvhistory.pastperfectonline.com
14. Perondi Collection photographs, 2024.28.10. Record
15. Perondi Collection album, "Cardelli Ranch," 2024.28.11. Record
16. Dayton, Nevada. Wikipedia
17. Silver City, Nevada. Wikipedia
18. Imlay, Nevada. Wikipedia; Thunder Mountain Monument. Wikipedia
19. William Raggio. Wikipedia
20. Nevada Artists Association, mission and history. nevadaartists.org
21. Nevada Museum of Art, history. nevadaart.org
22. Latimer Art Club. latimerartclub.com
23. History of Nevada (statehood, October 31, 1864). Wikipedia

Help Us Complete the Record

Alice Cardelli Swett's story still has gaps: her maiden name, her birth and death dates, the fate of the Imlay gallery, and the identity of Bill Swett. If you own one of her paintings, knew her, bought from the shop at 47 Main Street, or hold family photographs or papers, we would be glad to hear from you. Please contact us. Every new signature, label and recollection helps make this the most complete record of her work available anywhere.