November 2017 – my daily art display

Cecilia Beaux. Part 4 – The Parisian student and past and present romantic problems.

Cecilia Beaux and Enna Leavitt reading in their studio on Chestnut Street,
Philadelphia. Photograph, 1889-90.

………………….the year is 1887 and Cecilia still worked in her Chestnut Street studio completing many portraits. The pinnacle of this year as far as Cecilia was concerned was the exhibiting of her painting, Les Derniers Jours d’Enfance, at that year’s Paris Salon. This portrait of her sister and her nephew had been a labour of love and had taken two years to complete. It was not just its inclusion at the Salon which had excited her but as she looked at her returned painting, it was the thought of life in Paris which excited her. In her autobiography she recalled how she felt at that time:

“… After months it came back to me, bearing the French labels and number, in the French manner, so fraught with emotion to many hearts. I sat endlessly before it, longing for some revelation of the scenes through which it had passed; the drive under the sky of Paris, the studio of the great French artist, where his eye had actually rested on it, and observed it. The handling by employees; their French voices and speech; the propos of those who decided its placing; the Gallery, the French crowd, which later I was to know so well…”

She decided that she had to go and sample life in France, especially Paris. Her family were a little disconcerted about her proposed adventure, but they realised that as a thirty-two-year-old woman it was her decision. Her uncle William Biddle helped part finance the journey and sorted out a ticket for her ocean-going passage, passport, and letter of credit. He also persuaded a cousin of Cecilia, May Whitlock, to accompany her on the trip.

Cecilia also received a “farewell gift” from her good friend and fellow artist, Henry Thuron, who had once proposed to her. He gave her a set of monochrome drawings of paintings Cecilia was likely to see and sketch in the Louvre which could be used as preparation sketches or as she referred to them – ‘Springboards for the Galleries’.

Cecilia and May Whitlock boarded the steamship Nordland in New York in January 1888 for a voyage which would terminate in Antwerp. The sea passage across the Atlantic Ocean was not a pleasant one. The vessel was battered by gales and bobbed unceremoniously on the ferocious sea, with many of the passengers, including the two women suffering from mal de mer for the first week of their journey. It took twelve days to reach their Belgium destination, arriving in Antwerp in late January on a freezing cold day with the dockside covered in snow.

Descent from the Cross by Rubens (1612-14)

Despite the inclement Belgium weather Cecilia and May managed to do some sightseeing and visited The Cathedral of Our Lady where she saw the Rubens triptych Descent from the Cross. She was mesmerised by Rubens work, writing in her autobiography, Background with Figures:

“…No one who has not met the material opposition of pigment and its allies can gauge Rubens’s power to command it. What his religious compositions lack in the subtler side of holiness, they gain in the presentment of human emotion, as it appears, humble, adoring, and abandoned to sorrow, even in the ignorant gazing upon the uncomprehended manifestations of Divinity…”

The two ladies visited Brussels and their stay in Belgium lasted just three days before they set off by train for Paris, arriving at the Gare du Nord during the last week of January 1888, where they were met by another of their cousins. The ladies moved into a pension at 12 rue Boccador, which was situated between the Seine, where it is crossed by the Pont de l’Alma, and the Champs-Élysée. Their room at the pension was by no means salubrious but worse still it was cold and damp. Cecilia described their circumstances:

“…Our room was, of course, unheated, though it had a pretty chimney-piece and a clock, and what heat the previous summer had left behind had died long since between the closed windows and door. I was not pampered, and of course Steam heat was unknown to me at home. Our house had a small furnace, whose efforts were entirely devoted to the aged, the invalid, or the very young, but I had never known the damp, penetrating chill of never-heated houses in winter. Of course, a wood fire was impossible for us, but they wheeled us in a Schoubersky, a black charcoal stove, which could travel from room to room and never demand a chimney. Our chimney was a very retiring one, but with the Schoubersky approximately near it, we might avoid suffocation…”

Mother and Daughter by Cecilia Beaux (1898)
This was a portrait of Mrs. Clement Griscom and Frances C. Griscom.
Frances Canby Griscom was an American amateur golfer from Philadelphia and the daughter of shipping magnate Clement Griscom who owned the 7,000-acre hunting plantation in Bradfordville north of Tallahassee, Florida

Soon after her arrival Cecilia enrolled at the Académie Julian. The Académie Julian was a private liberal art school, founded in 1868 by Rodolphe Julian, a painter and art administrator and in his early days, a prize-fighter. The academy was especially popular with Americans, and several exponents of American Impressionism studied at the Julian. The École des Beaux-Arts was considered the premier Parisian art academy, but Cecilia could not enrol for study at that establishment as women were not accepted as students there and that ruling did not change until 1897.

The Studio by Maria Bashkirtseff (1881)
Maria Bashkirtseff was a student at the Académie Julian in 1887

The new Académie Julian accepted her. Because of its fine reputation, it soon became recognised as one of the best private art schools in Paris. Two decades after it first opened, the number of students attending courses at the establishment numbered about six hundred and it necessitated the opening of four more branches, one of which was in the 8th arrondissement at No. 5 Rue de Berri where Cecilia Beaux studied.

Her first assignment at the Académie Julian was to produce a full-length drawing which would be commented upon by the tutor. Her tutor was Tony Robert Fleury, the French historical painter. She remembered how nervous she was when he entered the room. She wrote:

“…’Tony’ — that is Tony Robert Fleury — was to criticise that week, and at the hour entered a young-middle aged and very handsome man, with a face in which there were deep marks of disappointment; his eyes, grey and deeply set, smouldered with burnt-out fires. How un-American they were! As I observed him from behind my easel, I felt that I had touched for the first time the confines of that which made France and Paris a place of pilgrimage. Into the room with him came something, not perhaps a quality of his own, but of what he had come from and lived in. The class, although accustomed to him, was in a nutter. I was still and icy with terror, fearing other qualms that I might not understand him and blunder hideously…”

There were no exhibitions held at the Académie, but a regular routine was set which awarded the best students with prime painting positions in the atelier. Cecilia described the routine:

“…Every week subjects for composition were given out. The compositions were handed in on a Saturday, and the student who had produced the best in the opinion of ‘le Maitre’ had the privilege of first choice of place on Monday morning, for the new pose. This, in such a crowded room, was an immense advantage, but punctuality was also the price, for without it one’s chance was given to the next. I had the good luck to win it pretty often…”

The students would often have to copy biblical scenes and one of the earliest tests was to copy the painting Supper at Emmaus, Cecilia had already seen Rembrandt’s version of the work at the Salon Carré in the Louvre and so what she produced was an imitation of that of the Dutch Master. The efforts of all the students were placed on the walls of the atelier prior to the inspection by Fleury. Cecilia recalled what happened next:

“…He stood growling before them with folded arms. Pointing to mine, he said savagely, ‘Qui est-ce qui a fait ca?’ [Who did that?]
Mdlle C. dragged me out and thrust me, quaking, before him, for he was often bitterly ironical.
‘Humph,’ he said, ‘c’’est vu? Je n’ai pas vu les autres, mais je sais bien que c’est la meilleure.’ [I have not seen the others, but I know it’s the best]…”

Within weeks of Cecilia and her cousin arriving in the French capital they had joined up with a group of expatriate artists including Florence Este, Gabrielle Clement, and Margaret Lesley Bush-Brown, who were all friends of Cecilia’s from the Pennsylvania Academy.

In Philadelphia, Cecilia’s love life never really took off despite the amorous attentions of suitors such as Henry Thuron who always put his rejection of marriage down to being both Catholic and poor! It was Henry who had given Cecilia the monochrome drawings on oil-sketch boards in preparation of her sketching visits to the Louvre. She wrote to him just prior to her ocean voyage, letting him down gently:

“…try to be my friend still……………….I am going to keep your beautiful gift to prove how much I desire this — and for the roses I never thought there could be so much pain with such beauty and sweetness…”

Portraits in Summer by Cecilia Beaux (1911)
This is a double portrait of Beaux’s nephew, Henry Sandwith Drinker, and his wife, Sophie Hutchinson Drinker. Henry was the son of Cecilia’s sister, Etta and her husband Henry Sturgiss Drinker. The painting was painted at Cecilia Beaux’s home (Green Alley) in Gloucester, Mass. during the couple’s honeymoon. Looking through the portico one can see sky, water, and sailboats in the distance.

During her stay in Paris she did enjoy the company of men and although she did go out with a couple of suitors, she would never commit to them. There was Leonard W. Bacon, a doctor whom she may have met four years earlier in Philadelphia when she sketched a posthumous portrait of his father. When his wife died he had, unbeknown to her, cast his eyes towards Cecilia as a possible “substitute”. He was on a visit to Paris in June 1888 and met up with her and had great hopes for their future and a replacement for his much-loved, late wife, Sarah. Unfortunately for him, he looked on Cecilia’s art as a mere hobby and something that would be forgotten when she became his wife and mother to his children. On his return to Philadelphia the following month Bacon came across Cecilia’s aunt Emily and told her about his hopes with regards Cecilia. She was “flabbergasted” by his aspiration that Cecilia would become the new mother to his children and told him that in her mind, he had no chance of success with his plan. Emily told her husband William Biddle about the conversation and he thought the whole situation was hilarious. He wrote a letter to Cecilia on July 24th 1888 and in it he commented on Bacon’s misguided plans for Cecilia:

“…”my logical mind insists on including the other consequence, which he didn’t mention, of your being a grand mother to his young grand children, & then I roar, — every time — Oh! dear me!” Dr. Bacon had “fallen from the pedestal” on which the aunts had placed him, and the “interview” with Aunt Emily “sav[ed] Cecilia from all further worry and trouble from that source…”

A more serious romantic issue for Cecilia was one that had begun back in Philadelphia with Edwin Swift Balch. Balch was ideal husband material. He was young (a year younger than Cecilia). He was a wealthy bachelor and part of the Philadelphia elite. He painted miniatures and was a writer, scientist, and an authority on polar history and exploration. He had met Cecilia as he had a studio in the same building in Philadelphia as Cecilia’s, and the tender shoots of romance began to appear. However, whilst in France, Cecilia realised that her great passion for her art was far greater than her passion for Balch. This realisation caused her to review her life. The whole process must have caused her great heartache as witnessed in the letter she wrote to her uncle, William Biddle, on September 30th, 1888:

“…And now prepare your dear mind for the real and serious thing I have to say. You will not perhaps believe the struggle that it costs me — because I know that this is the real end. It is all over between me and Mr. Balch. It is not his fault, but I believe now that he is reconciled to it. He speaks of it as “the break which I foresaw” and at the end — “I have written more but tore it up as it is silly to reproach you.” He will never know how much I cared for him and still do. What I admired in him, what attracted me, and what I really loved — time and distance could not, and have not changed, but what was not satisfied has grown more imperative and for the first time I know that it will not do. I have expanded here and I could not get into the place I might have got into before. Though even then I should have had to stifle something. You will say that I ought to have known this before. That if I had listened to reason I should have saved many people much pain. To which I can only say that no one but myself can know how I clung to what I found in him. I know that it was selfish, but I hoped to make up for it. Of one thing I feel sure that he does not suffer now more than I do, and he has, as regards this side of life, a much more hopeful future than I. All the same I ought to have made the sacrifice and taken the risk of losing. Do not think I am not paying for it — that is all.
I am waiting anxiously now to hear what you think about my staying over here a few months longer. You will easily understand that now I wish to stay as never before. It would be very painful for me to go home now, and for him too. He would almost be driven away himself if I did. Besides I must allow to the weakness of its being safer for both of us. I am besides very anxious to paint something for next year’s Salon…”

Biddle was concerned with what he had read and on October 10th, 1888, wrote back to Cecilia:

“…You do flit about pretty fast, — physically, — & perhaps Emotionally — but I trust not morally or mentally. With those departments of one’s being it is wiser & safer to “go slow”…. In regard to Mr. B. I can only say that if you really feel sure about yourself we all rejoice in your decision, — & unless you were prepared to accept now, or at least very soon, it was your duty to so decide anyway. Even if you were not sure of yourself, — or were sure, the other way…. Judging from what you have written me, his attitude in the affair seems manly & dignified & raises him in my estimation. I’m sorry for him, — but do not think his life will suffer…. If there is no change in our family status at 4305, I can see no valid reason for your hurrying home in May or June & leaving the Salon & Exposition unseen or only half seen…”

…………………………..to be continued.

Most of the information for the blogs featuring Cecilia Beaux came from two books:
Background with Figures, the autobiography of Cecilia Beaux
Family Portrait by Catherine Drinker Bowen
and the e-book:
Out of the Background: Cecilia Beaux and the Art of Portraiture by Tara Leigh Tappert.

Extracts from letters to and from Cecilia Beaux came from The Beaux Papers held at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art

Information alsocame from the blog, American Girls Art Club In Paris. . . and Beyond, featuring Cecilia Beaux was also very informative and is a great blog, well worth visiting on a regular basis.:
https://americangirlsartclubinparis.com/tag/catherine-ann-drinker/

and

Cecilia Beaux: The Power of Paris (1888)

Cecilia Beaux. Part 3 – the aspiring portrait artist.

Self portrait by Cecilia Beaux (c.1889-1894)

………….the year is 1881 and Cecilia Beaux had started to attend classes organised by a former schoolfriend and their work had been periodically critiqued by the painter William Sartain. These classes went on for two years but in 1883 Cecilia got her own studio on Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and the class moved there where they did unsupervised life drawings. It was unsupervised as the visits by William Sartain had ended due to the long commute he had to make to get from New York to Philadelphia in order to examine and review the ladies’ work. At this time Cecilia was concentrating on her portraiture and as she wrote in her biography she even decided to try and have a work of hers included in an exhibition:

“…At this time, I did a study of a friend which resulted in my making my
first entrance into the doubtful field of the Exhibitions. It was well hung at the Pennsylvania Academy and was considerably noticed…”

Les derniers jours d’ enfance by Cecilia Beaux (1883-1885)

It was whilst walking around her large and empty studio that Cecilia had the idea to paint a large portrait of two people in “landscape” format. Unbeknown to her at the time, it was to be one of her best-known works. Her idea was to paint a portrait of a mother and her small child. Not just any mother and child but her sister Etta, who had married Henry Sturgiss Drinker in 1879, and her first-born child, Henry (Harry) Sandwith who was born a year later. In her autobiography, Background with Figures, she envisioned how the portrait would look:

“…The mother in black sat in a low chair, the brown-eyed boy of three almost reclining in her arms. He was to wear a short blue-and-white cotton garment, his bare legs trailing over his mother’s knees. Her head was bent over him, and his hands lay upon her very white ones, which were clasped around him. The whole picture was to be warm in tone and in an interior which did not exist, except in the mind of the designer…”

She had discussed the idea with William Sartain who probably came up with the French title for the proposed work, Les derniers jours d’enfance. (The last days of childhood). Now, all she had to do was persuade her sister Etta to agree to pose with her son for the painting and she foresaw problems, which she wrote about:

“…Poor Etta would have to take the boy to town, an hour’s trip in the horse-cars, climb eighty-four steps, and probably do this many times, with a rather uncertain result…”

However, all Cecilia’s worries came to nought as Etta was only too pleased to have her and her son depicted in a portrait. Cecilia embarked on this large painting (46 x 54 inches / 116 x 137cms) in 1883 and it took two years to complete. In the painting, we see Etta, sitting in an old steamer chair, dressed in a black frock with its various textures. Cecilia had decided to show just one of her sister’s arms in the painting and so she had made up one closely-fitting black satin sleeve with rich lace at the wrist. Although hard to detect in the picture, Cecilia had placed a canton crepe shawl, which belonged to her grandmother, around her sister’s knees, the garment exactly taking the lines of the skirt. The shawl had been dyed black and though it was delicate, had a rich hanging texture, which made it form-fitting.

Cecilia had staged the depiction meticulously bringing several family accoutrements into her studio. On the floor she had laid one of the Leavitt family’s best oriental rugs and Etta had lent her one of her in-law’s heirlooms, a small wooden table upon which she placed a flower-filled vase belonging to the Drinker family. The background is interesting. Cecilia went out and bought a short piece of panelling from a carpenter’s shop and dyed it so it looked like a piece of mahogany and it was so placed behind the sitters so as to look like a piece of wainscoting joining the wall and floor.
Cecilia remembered in her autobiography that the numerous sittings for this joint portrait went well:

“…My sister bore her part with her usual gallantry. The boy was extremely amused by the novelty of the scene in which he found himself. His mother’s lap was comfortable, his head leaned upon her breast and her voice was close to his ear, and in the rests, he enjoyed running out into the hall with me to get a distant view of the canvas through the open door…”

It is interesting to note that Etta was occasionally relieved of her seated pose by a young woman who occupied the studio next door, for she volunteered to help as a model and posed for the draped knees and feet !

Look carefully how Cecilia had her sister and nephew pose with their hands entwined on her lap at the centre of the composition making it the focal point. Harry’s darkened fingers of his left hand placed on top of the white hand of his mother. The painting was exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts annual exhibition in 1885 and was awarded the Mary Smith Prize for the best work by a local woman.

Self-portrait by Margaret Lesley Bush-Brown (1914)

Two years later, in 1887, a girlfriend of Cecilia and a fellow painter, Margaret Lesley Bush-Brown, who had been studying art at the Académie Julian in Paris and was returning to France, suggested taking the painting to the Salon for examination by the exhibition jurists. Cecilia was taken aback by the offer but agreed and the Salon jurists accepted it and it was prominently displayed in the Paris Salon of 1887. Cecilia deemed this to be a great honour and marked the beginning of her artistic career. More importantly maybe, it also gave her a hankering to taste the delights of Paris which she believed to be the heart and soul of the art world.

Arrangement in Grey and Black Portrait if the Artist’s Mother, by Whistler (1871)

Many people have commented on the likeness of the setting of Cecilia’s mother and child depiction to James McNeill Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait if the Artist’s Mother, which had been displayed at the 1881 Centennial Exhibition held in Philadelphia and probably had been seen by Cecilia, but she strongly denied that Whistler’s portrait of his mother had influenced her. The painting Les derniers jours d’enfance is now housed at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

Mrs. Alexander Sedgwick and Daughter Christina,by Cecilia Beaux (1902)

Cecilia Beaux went on to paint many tender mother and child portraits which had become so popular. One example of this was her portrait, completed in 1902, entitled Mrs. Alexander Sedgwick and Daughter Christina. Five-year old Christina would, seventeen years later, marry the famous American writer and journalist, John Phillips Marquand who was famous for his Mr Moto spy stories.

The Reverend Doctor William Henry Furness by Cecilia Beaux (1886)

Following the completion and success of The Last Days of Childhood Cecilia Beaux carried on with her portraiture. She captured the likenesses of many leading figures from the worlds of politics and the arts, as well as works featuring friends, neighbours, family and, through her connections with the church, she produced three commissioned portraits of ministers, two of whom came through her involvement with the Woodland Presbyterian Church. One such portrait was of the well-known and well-respected eighty-four-year-old Philadelphia Unitarian minister, Reverend Doctor William Henry Furness, which she completed in 1886. Friends of the minister, who had just retired, commissioned the portrait to commemorate all the work he had done for the ministry over a fifty-year period. When the work was briefly exhibited at the Earle galleries, prior to it being given over to the Unitarian Church in Philadelphia for a fee of $500, it was well received by both the public and the art critics. The art critic of the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, wrote in the December 28th edition of the newspaper:

“…Miss Beaux has copied nature with faithful care, and has concurrently reproduced those suggestions of individuality and personality…. In this respect the portrait is marvellously life-like, and no one not coldly indifferent and insensible can study the work without being impressed by the attributes of benign, gracious, potent manliness it presents…”

Cecilia completed many portraits featuring Ethel Page, a Philadelphia socialite. Cecilia met Ethel Page in 1876. The 1884 portrait of Page with the sitter’s face brightly lit in contrast to the dark background was typical of was typical of Cecilia’s early style.

The haunting facial expression of the sitter with her piercing stare makes for a beautiful study.

Ethel Page as Undine by Cecilia Beaux (1885)

Another portrait of Page completed in 1885 depicts the actress in her role as Uncompaniondine and this again won Cecilia the Mary Smith Prize at the Pennsylvania Academy for the second year in a row.

Cecilia Beaux completed a pastel portrait of Ethel Page in 1890. It is a much softer depiction which has a feeling of warmth and in a way, highlights the artist-sitter’s friendly relationship. The portrait of Ethel Page also exudes a sense of elegance and I am sure the finished painting pleased the sitter.

A new phase in Cecilia Beaux’s life came in January 1888 when she and her companion, her cousin May Whitlock boarded the SS Nordland bound for Paris……..

………………………..to be continued.

Besides various internet websites, most of the information for the blogs featuring Cecilia Beaux came from two books:

Background with Figures, the autobiography of Cecilia Beaux

Family Portrait by Catherine Drinker Bowen

and the e-book:
Out of the Background: Cecilia Beaux and the Art of Portraiture by Tara Leigh Tappert

The blog, American Girls Art Club In Paris. . . and Beyond, featuring Cecilia Beaux was also very informative and is a great blog, well worth visiting on a regular basis.:

https://americangirlsartclubinparis.com/tag/catherine-ann-drinker/

Cecilia (Leilie) Beaux. Part 2 – the beginning of an artistic career.

The early childhood and teenage years of Cecilia (Leilie) Beaux were challenging. She and her elder sister Etta lived with their maternal grandmother Cecilia Kent Leavitt and their maiden aunt Eliza. Leilie and Etta were completely different in character. Etta was the more placid and was happy to accept traditional domestic life and probably modelled herself on her grandmother who had nurtured her own eight children. Leilie, on the other hand, was both stormy and impassioned and hankered for her independence and believed that financial security would achieve that status. She would, like her late mother and aunt, Eliza, go out to work and earn money. Leilie was a perfectionist and suffered like all perfectionists tend to do. In her personal diary which she started at the age of fourteen, she wrote:

“…It seems to me that I haven’t progressed at all. I do believe that it is harder for some people to be good than others, a great deal harder. Some people seem to be good naturally like Etta…but as for poor me why I’m nothing absolutely nothing, able only to do wrong. Sometimes it seems to me as if I were tied in a spiritual way to a string of a certain length. I get on very well at first and feel so free and happy, feel as if I really was getting better, when suddenly I come to the end of my string, and am thrown back to the old place again…”

Leilie was often rebellious as a teenager, frustrated with her life and often aspiring to do something different. In her autobiography she remembered that in her teenage years she wrote a poem expressing her exasperation:

“…Lost hope, lost courage, lost ambition,
What’s left but shams of these to hide my true condition?
Feigned peace and joy, feigned happy effort,
False tongue, proclaiming, “Art’s my comfort.”
Nought’s left but bones, and stones and duty that’s not pleasure,
But grinding, ceaseless toil, whose end’s the measure
Of the short web of life the Fates have spun me.
What’s this… I’ve uttered words of treason.
What’s lost? My time, my daylight, and my reason…”

Leilie also suffered mentally from the departure of her father from the family home. Sadly, she blamed herself for his departure, as her mother had died giving birth to her. She began to make excuses for him abandoning his daughters. Despite his untimely and devastating departure she still managed to put him on a pedestal, someone to be almost adored.

Little Lamerche by Cecilia Beaux (c.1900)

Leilie was brought up in a family environment where music was an essential part of life. Her aunt Eliza was a highly talented musician and earned money for the family by giving music lessons. The family owned a Chickering grand piano and there would be frequent family recitals in the evenings with performances given by Eliza and William Beadle, Emily’s husband, who also acted as organist at the local Presbyterian church the family attended. When Leilie was eleven years old, she learnt to play the piano but never reached a level of accomplishment which satisfied her and so, as a perfectionist, she gave it up.

Man with the Cat (Henry Sturgis Drinker) by Cecilia Beaux (1888)
Henry Sturgis Drinker, was Cecilia Beaux’s brother-in-law (Etta’s Leavitt’s husband). He was a railroad executive and president of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

Up to the age of fourteen Etta and Leilie were home-tutored, mainly because of the high cost of formal schooling. Leilie’s early interest focused on literature and poetry and at one time she believed she would like to become a writer. William Biddle’s arrival on the scene as Emily Leavitt’s husband meant that the Leavitt’s finances improved, so much so, that it was decided that Etta and Leilie could afford to receive formal education at Misses Lymans’ School. It was an all-female school run by Catherine and Charlotte Lyman. This was the first time the two girls were able to absorb life outside the family. Leilie began to sketch and was pleased with her efforts. In her autobiography, Background with Figures, she wrote:

“…Long before it was discovered that I had more proficiency with a pencil than I had on the piano, I accompanied my aunts on visits to what picture galleries and special exhibitions there were…”

Henry James by Cecilia Beaux (1911)
The portrait depicts the America author Henry James during his final trip to the United States, when he was recovering from a nervous breakdown and the death of his brother, William.

Leilie began to develop and interest in the Arts and her aunts and uncles would take her to various art galleries to encourage her. It was during the 1870’s that there was a sudden desire of wealthy Americans to buy works of art especially by French painters. It was a status symbol for these wealthy households to have works by the emerging French masters hanging on the walls so that they would impress visiting dinner guests. One such person, a wealthy and successful businessman, was Henry C. Gibson, an art collector, banker, real estate developer, and distiller. His Philadelphia house on Walnut Street housed many works of art and Leilie’s uncle was fortunate to receive an invite to view the works of art and he took Leilie with him. They must have re-visited the house on several occasions for she wrote in her autobiography:

“…Very few of the pictures were large, and all could be easily seen. Of course, I knew nothing of these virtues of presentation; I knew nothing but my own happiness. I must have been taken several times to the gallery, for I had my favorites and was unembarrassed by the difference of schools…”

Harold and Mildred Colton by Cecilia Beaux (1887)

Her family decided that Leilie should pursue her interest in drawing and painting and needed to find someone who could nurture Leilie’s talent. The person chosen to guide Leilie was the talented artist, and painter of historical and biblical scenes, thirty-one-year-old Catherine Ann Drinker, who had a local studio. Coincidently, she would later become Etta’s sister-in-law in 1879 when Etta married her brother, Henry Sturgess Drinker. In 1871, sixteen-years-old Leilie remembered her first visit to Catherine Drinker’s Philadelphia studio which was at the top of an old house at Fifth and Walnut Streets on Independence Square. In her autobiography she wrote:

“…I am glad that the studio was typical, traditional, and not to be confused with any ordinary or domestic scene, for it was the first studio I ever entered. On its threshold, everyday existence dropped completely out of sight and memory. What windows there were, were covered with hangings, nondescript, as they were under the shadow of the skylight, which was upright, like a broad high window, and without glare. There was a vast sweeping curtain which partly shut off one side of the room, and this, with other dark corners, contributed to its mystery and suggestiveness. The place had long been a studio, and bore the signs of this in big, partly obliterated figures, outlines, drawn in chalk, upon its dusky wall, opposite the light. Miss Drinker had spent her early life in China, whence her family had brought many examples of Chinese art and furniture. The faded gold of a large seated Buddha gleamed from a dark corner. There was a lay figure, which was draped for a while in the rich robes that Miss Drinker had used for her ‘Daniel…”

Old-fashioned Music (Guitar Player) by Catherine Drinker (1880)

In 1880, Catherine Drinker won the prestigious Mary Smith Prize for her painting Old Fashioned Music. This prize was awarded to women artists by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. The award recognized the best work by a Philadelphia woman artist at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts annual exhibition — a work that showed “the most originality of subject, beauty of design and drawing, and finesse of colour and skill of execution”.

Charles Sumner Bird and His Sister Edith Bird Bass by Cecilia Beaux (1907)
Many of Cecilia Beaux’s portraits were of New Englanders, including this elegant image of Charles Sumner Bird and his sister Edith.
The Bird family had made their fortune in the manufacture of paper, and they owned a 194-acre estate, called “Endean,” in East Walpole, Massachusetts, overlooking the Neponset River.

For Leilie, Catherine was not just an art teacher, she was a friend despite their fourteen-year age difference, a friendship which would last over fifty years. Leilie spent a year learning about art under the watchful eye of Catherine until Catherine decided that Leilie should move to a formal art school. She spoke to William Biddle, who, as the husband of Leilie’s aunt Emily, had been acting as Leilie’s unofficial guardian. Catherine suggested that the finest art school for his charge was the Van der Wielen School. It was run by a young Dutch-Flemish artist, Francis Adolf Van der Wielen, who had immigrated to Philadelphia in 1868 after he had trained at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Art. He opened his art school as a way of countering the fact that he had begun to find it difficult to paint due to his failing eyesight. In 1872, seventeen-year-old Leilie Beaux enrolled at the school.

Most of Van der Wielen’s female students had come to him to learn about art and looked upon it as a delightful hobby but some of his students, like Leilie, looked upon art as a skill that would eventually earn them money. Although Leilie had doubts about her tutor, due to his poor grasp of the English language and the fact that his eyesight was starting to fail him, thus making his visual criticism of his students’ work questionable. However, she remained at his school for almost two years gaining knowledge of linear and aerial perspective and the principles of light and shade. In 1873, Van der Wielen married one of his more mature students and the couple left America for a new life in Europe. His art school would have closed but for Catherine Drinker stepping in and taking over the teaching.

In 1873 Cecilia(Leilie) Beaux reached the age of eighteen and decided that it was time to put her artistic skills to work to earn money for herself and thus gain a modicum of independence and also to bolster the family’s finances. In her autobiography she wrote:

“…My grandmother’s house was my home, and in it I was the youngest born, but I wished to earn my living and to be perhaps some day a contributor to the family expenses…”

For a month she took lessons in china painting and found that in a short time she had mastered the delicate technique. She would produce portraits on large china plates. One of her early successes was a china plaque featuring a young gold-haired girl, the parents of the child were delighted.

From this came many commissions featuring paintings of young children. However, she never really took to this type of work saying:

“…Without knowing why, I am glad to say that I greatly despised these productions, and would have been glad to hear that, though they would never ‘wash off,’ some of them had worn out their suspending wires and been dashed to pieces. This was the lowest depth I ever reached in commercial art, and, although it was a period when youth and romance were in their first attendance on me, I remember it with gloom and record it with shame…”

Catherine Drinker had taught art at Miss Sanford’s School for young ladies for many years but now, with taking over at Van der Wielen’s school she had to give up her post at the Sanford School and she recommended her protégé, Leilie to take her place. Leilie was taken on as a part-time drawing instructor at the school, teaching two classes, one morning a week. She would teach her young pupils how to draw, how to enlarge and how to shade. She taught there for three years and this led to her also giving private art lessons which earned her more money. In 1874, William Biddle introduced Leilie to a printer, Thomas Sinclair, of Thomas Sinclair and Sons. He and the Leavitts knew each other as they were fellow members of the Woodland Presbyterian Church and she was offered her first professional illustration job. Leilie had now finally launched herself into the art world and she decided that she needed to have a definite artistic identity and chose to revert to using her mother’s name. From thenceforth she was to be known as Cecilia Beaux.

As an aspiring artists Cecilia wanted the best artistic tuition that she could receive, given by the most talented tutors, and for her, this meant attending the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (P.A.F.A.) which was a museum and art school in Philadelphia, and was founded in 1805. In 1871 it had been closed for major reconstruction and was not re-opened until 1876. Another reason for Cecilia wanting to attend classes at this prestigious art academy was that in 1878 Catherine Drinker became the first woman to teach there. However, Cecilia’s uncle William was dead set against the idea of his “charge” attending the academy. Cecilia remembered her uncle’s argument for his decision:

“…I was a seemly girl and would probably marry. Why should I be thrown into a rabble of untidy and indiscriminate art students and no one knew what influence? So reasoned his chivalrous and also Quaker soul, which revolted against the life-class and everything pertaining to it. He put a strong and quiet arm between me and what he judged to be a more than doubtful adventure…”

Cecilia’s next step on the artistic ladder came by way of a former school friend from Miss Lyman’s School. Her friend, who had come from a wealthy background had spent her years after finishing her schooling “immersed in social gaiety” as a debutante but had now decided to take painting more seriously and had taken a studio and organised a class to be held three times a week to sketch and paint using a model. She invited Cecilia to join the class and her uncle, William Biddle thought this was a good idea and funded his wife’s niece participation. The work of all at the class was overseen on a fortnightly basis by the New York-based American painter William Sartain. Cecilia remembered the time well writing:

“…There were a few, only, in the class, all young, but all respectful toward what we were undertaking. It was my first conscious contact with the high and ancient demands of Art…”

…………………………to be continued

A lot of the information for the blogs featuring Cecilia Beaux came from two books:
Backgorund with Figures, the autobiography of Cecilia Beaux
Family Portrait by Catherine Drinker Bowen
and the e-book:
Out of the Background: Cecilia Beaux and the Art of Portraiture by Tara Leigh Tappert

Cecilia (Leilie) Beaux. Part 1 – Ancestors and the early years

Portrait of Cecilia Beaux by John Lambert (1905)

My featured artist today is looked upon as one of the greatest portrait painters of her time. Of her, the American painter, William Merritt Chase said:
“…[she is] the greatest woman painter that had ever lived…. She is a painter as Velasquez and Rembrandt were, and like them, she infuses the subtle quality of life into her work…”

She is the nineteenth century American society portrait painter, Cecilia Beaux (née Leavitt). This initial blog looks on her life before she became a professional painter but maybe to understand her better, one must understand the trials and tribulations of her early life and one has also to go back to the turn of the eighteenth century and her maternal grandparents John Wheeler Leavitt and his wife Cecilia Kent Leavitt. John and Cecilia were both born in the last decade of the eighteenth century and were married in 1820. Their ancestral history could be traced

back to seventeenth-century New England and before that to England. John was a prosperous textile merchant who founded the New York based family firm John W. & Rufus Leavitt Company, and was one of the most prominent businessmen of his age. He and his wife had eight children and as the saying goes “money was no object” for this family. The children were all home-tutored in all the academic subjects and taught to play the piano at which the second youngest, Eliza became a brilliant musician.

Mrs. John Wheeler Leavitt by Cecilia Beaux (1885) Cecilia Beaux’s maternal grandmother.

However, the good times ended abruptly in 1846 with problems in the cotton industry and debts that could not be serviced, and the company filed for bankruptcy. The Leavitt family owed their creditors so much money they had to sell their New York town house and their country estate on the Palisades in Hoboken and John and Cecilia Kent Leavitt were forced to move to a small house in a “rough” suburb. Their two eldest daughters, Cecilia (the mother of Cecilia Beaux) and Eliza had to go out to work to help with the family finances. Cecilia worked as a music teacher and Eliza worked as a governess. It is noted in Cecilia Beaux’s autobiography Background with Figures, that the sons were of little help. As she put it, they were dreamers and not doers! As is often the case when one is subjected to financial pressure, John Leavitt’s health took a turn for the worse and his wife had to take over the running of the house and manage the family finances.

A Little Girl (Fanny Travis Cochran), by Cecilia Beaux (1887)

Cecilia and Eliza moved from the family home in New York to Philadelphia around 1848 where they had distant relatives. With the help of friends, they were soon socially accepted. Financial help for John Leavitt and his family materialised in the form of a foreigner, Jean Adolph Beaux. He came from the city of Nimes in France, in 1848 and was from a family of French Huguenots, long engaged in the silk manufacture business. In 1848, aged thirty-eight, he emigrated to Philadelphia to set up an American branch of his family’s business, J. P. Beaux & Co., Sewing Silks.

Head of a French Peasant Woman by Cecilia Beaux (1888)

Although there were many eligible women for the Frenchman to choose a companion, he had fallen desperately in love with Cecilia Leavitt, maybe partly because she had an excellent grasp of the French language, which certainly helped as John-Adolph’s grasp of the English language was poor. Cecilia also fell for the charming and handsome French gentleman and wrote home to her family in New York saying she had met a French gentleman with beautiful blue eyes. However, she made sure her relationship with Jean Adolphe progressed slowly and it was some time later that he headed to New York to meet her father and ask him for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Cecilia father was satisfied that Jean Adolph could provide for his eldest daughter and so agreed. John Adolph Beaux and Cecilia Leavitt were married in a society wedding at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York on April 3rd, 1850 and soon after a branch of the Beaux family silk business was set up in Pine Street, New York, which was managed by John Wheeler Leavitt and once again the Leavitt family finances were on an even keel.

Helen Bigelow Merriman by Cecilia Beaux (1908)
Painter and art collector, and one of the founders of the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts

It was not long before Cecilia and Jean-Adolph started a family. Their first child, a daughter, Alice Zepherine was born in February 1851 but sadly only lived for eleven months. The couple’s second child, Aimée Ernesta, nicknamed Etta, was born on October 26th, 1852, just ten months after the death of Alice. By 1854 Jean-Adolph, his wife Cecilia and their daughter Etta had moved to Philadelphia and on May 1st, the following year, a further addition to the family arrived – a daughter whom they named Eliza Cecilia, the names of her aunt and mother. This should have been a joyous time but in fact it was a traumatic and sad time with Jean-Adolph’s wife dying twelve days after giving birth due to puerperal fever, a bacterial infection following childbirth complications.

Clement B. Newbold by Cecilia Beaux (1912)

Jean-Adolph was devastated and inconsolable by his wife’s death, so much so, he could not endure the heartache and returned to the comfort of his family in Nimes, leaving his company to be run by his brother Edmund and left his two children to the care of his mother-in-law, Cecilia Kent Leavitt, who had also lost a dear one two years earlier, with the death of her husband, John Wheeler Leavitt. Can you imagine how this all affected the two children, Etta and Cecilia? Aimée Ernesta (Etta) Beaux had witnessed the birth of her sister, quickly followed by the death of her mother, and then the departure of her father back to France. Can you understand that the irrevocable change in the structure of her family must have been a frightening and confusing event? Jean-Adolph stayed away from his children for two years, not returning to Philadelphia until 1857, at which time Cecilia and Etta were two and five years of age and living with their maternal grandmother and her four remaining children, who hadn’t flown the nest, Eliza, Samuel, Charles, and Emily. On his return to America, Jean-Adolph had much to repair in his relationship with his children and his mother-in-law as well as attempt to set himself in business, once again. He achieved little on both these fronts although he did work for his old family company, J.P. Beaux & Co., Sewing Silks. Although the company prospered his charm offensive with the Leavitt family failed. They never forgave this “foreigner” for abandoning his children and his mother-in-law whom he was living with never considered him a fit father to his children and slowly took charge of the future of her two grandchildren, despite having had to rear eight children of her own. Rightly or wrongly, Cecilia’s grandmother probably never held back on her adverse comments with regards her son-in-law and later in life, Cecilia commented on this:

“…We didn’t love Papa very much, he was so foreign. We thought him peculiar…”

The relationship between Jean-Adolph and his third child Cecilia was a troubled one as he found his new-born daughter to be little more than a sad reminder and pale substitute for his cherished but sadly departed wife. One believes that when he looked upon her, he immediately thought about the death of her mother in childbirth. It had even reached the point that he could not bear to call her Cecilia (also his late wife’s name) as it brought up too many sad memories of deceased wife and so despite the family’s dislike of the idea, she was referred to as Leilie and not Cecilia. Although this may have comforted her father, in a way it stigmatised the child herself who as she grew older believed that in a way she had caused the death of her mother and was now unfit to bear her name.

Mrs. Clement B. Newbold by Cecilia Beaux (1896)

Things went from bad to worse for Jean-Adolph. His business was failing and finally collapsed in 1860. His brother and partner in the firm, Edmund, went back to France but Jean-Adolph stayed with his children and in-laws albeit they had to move to a smaller house. Now having no business and the bringing up of his children having been “usurped” by his mother-in-law, Jean Adolph believed there was nothing left for him in Philadelphia and so he went back to France in 1861 and did not return to America for twelve years, which gives one an idea for the regard he had for his children.

Portrait of Mrs. Samuel Hamilton Brooks by Cecilia Beaux (1911)
Founder of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art

With the collapse of the J.P. Beaux Silk Company there was now little money coming into the Leavitt household. For Leilie it was a very sad time without a mother and father. Although she asked her grandmother and her family about her mother, their sadness meant that they were never forthcoming with information and so Leilie began to invent romantic images of her mother. Maybe her memory of her father was slightly tainted by the views of her grandmother and aunts.

Portrait of Mr. Samuel Hamilton Brooks by Cecilia Beaux (1911)

It must be said that Leilie and her sister Etta who lived with the Leavitt family received vast amounts of love from their grandmother and their two aunts Eliza and Emily. Both girls were also very fond of their uncle Charles but often found their uncle Samuel annoying.

In 1860, Emily Leavitt, Leilie’s favourite aunt, married William Foster Biddle, an engineer by profession, and the two of them set up home. She was twenty-one and he was twenty-five. A year after their marriage, Biddle left his wife and began his military service with the rank of captain and rather than live alone, Emily returned to living with her mother, her siblings and the two Beaux girls. After completing his military service at the end of the Civil War, William Biddle was employed as a mining engineer and he and his wife Emily moved back to their own home.

Cecilia Kent Levitt ran the Leavitt household which now just comprised of her maiden daughter Eliza, and her two grandchildren, Etta and Leilia Beaux. Their aunt Emily looked after her two nieces’ education and their grandmother saw to their religious needs ensuring both girls, when they reached twelve years of age, were confirmed in the Presbyterian faith.

Half-Tide, Annisquam River by Cecilia Beaux (c.1905)
A rare example of Cecilia Beaux’s landscape work.

Cecilia Kent Leavitt, her daughter Emily and the two Beaux girls re-located on several occasions. Their frequent moves were due to Leavitt family’s deteriorating financial situation. However, through the good auspices of the son-in-law William Beadle, who rose to become vice president of Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, their financial situation improved and this in turn lifted the family spirits of the four females. In 1873 Cecilia Kent Leavitt finally settled her family down in a house in Spruce Street, West Philadelphia. In her 1930 autobiography, Background with Figures, Leilie remembered that as a young fourteen-year-old how her Aunt Emily had shaped her life. She wrote:

“…My aunt had assisted in my education, and my uncle [Emily’s husband Walter Biddle] was to be, after my grandmother, the strongest and most beneficent influence in my life. I know that my Aunt Emily’s contribution to my bringing up had several channels. My lessons, with her, took place in the dining-room, rather a gloomy spot by day, on winter mornings, and we sat at either end of the green-felt-covered table. I am sure she labored over the sums and geography we bent over, but what remains consciously of these hours are the periods devoted to dictation. The use of the pen did not trouble me. Spelling was not one of my difficulties, and the appearance of new words, and of phrases far from anything I could have dreamed of, were a delight. Above all, and the real source of the living word enduring in this episode, was the choice…”

Mr. and Mrs. Anson Phelps Stokes by Cecilia Beaux (1898)
He was a wealthy American merchant, property developer, banker, and philanthropist.

Later in life Leilie told how the two greatest influences on her life were her grandmother and William Biddle. For Leilie, William was the main man in her teenage years and she relied on him for guidance and William Biddle recognised the energy and creativity of Leilie and he believed it was his job to channel this dynamism…………………………………..

……..to be continued

Mary Dawson Elwell

In a recent blog (My Daily Art Display, October 15th, 2017 – The Alma-Tadema Ladies. Part 2 – The Two Daughters, Anna and Laurense), I highlighted the artwork of Anna Alma-Tadema, the daughter of the great painter, Lawrence Alma-Tadema and marvelled at some of her interior paintings. In today’s blog I am going to look at another female painter who had mastered the art of depicting the interior of houses. She is the nineteenth century artist, Mary Dawson Holmes Ewell. I had featured her in a series of blogs about her husband, Frederick Elwell but for this blog I want to concentrate on her outstanding ability as an artist.

The Landing in Summer by Mary Elwell (1930)

Mary Dawson Bishop was born in Liverpool on August 13th, 1874. Her father, John Bishop, was a ship broker. Her mother, Mary Ellen Dawson, was the daughter of a Liverpool boot maker, Thomas Candlin and his wife Sarah who was a milliner and dress maker. Mary and her younger sister, Elsie, lived in the Fairfield district of Liverpool. Tragedy struck the family in 1879 when Mary’s thirty-six-year-old father died. Shortly after the death of her husband, Mary and her two daughters moved to Heaton Chapel, Manchester to live with her bachelor brother Henry who was fifteen years her senior. It was here that Mary and Elise went to kindergarten and primary school.

Having completed her primary schooling in 1885, eleven-year old Mary enrolled at Manchester’s prestigious Ellerslie College and it was here that she received her early artistic tuition, to ensure she had this “must-have” social skill for young Victorian ladies. The pupils attending this school were mainly from merchant families and it was probably due to Mary’s Uncle Henry and his business connections that allowed her to gain entrance to the college. Mary Bishop completed studies at Ellerslie around the early 1890’s. Not much is written about her life after leaving college but it is believed she carried on her art studies influenced by two of her uncles, Henry and Walter were not only successful business men but avid art collectors.

The next we hear of Mary Dawson Bishop was that she married George Alfred Holmes at the Church of All Saints, Heaton Norris, Stockport in June 1896. Mary was twenty-one years old and her husband George Alfred was forty-one. So why did Mary marry a man twice her age? This has been the topic of much speculation. George Alfred Holmes lived and had his office in Hull and was a prosperous oil broker and so there was the element that on her marriage to him, Mary would be financially secure. Hull, like her birthplace, was a seaport and maybe Mary looked on the prospect of living in Hull with her husband. Maybe she looked upon her husband as a father figure, having lost her own father at the age of five. But, of course, it could simply be that Mary fell in love with George Alfred Holmes.

Mary and Alfred Holmes set up their home in the small inland market town of Beverley which was just ten miles north of from Hull, a town where she would stay for the rest of her life.

It was in 1904 that Frederick Elwell was to enter the life of Mary Bishop Holmes. Following a somewhat unsuccessful period in London as far as his art sales were concerned, Fred Elwell had left London, a somewhat defeated man, and returned to Yorkshire. In the capital there were just too many artists chasing a small amount of commissions and this sudden realisation that the London streets were not paved with gold affected Elwell and there was a suggestion that he had suffered a nervous breakdown brought on by his financial situation. On hearing of his son’s state of health and financial predicament, his father travelled from Yorkshire and brought his son back to Beverley where his family and friends were and where he could expect a more profitable future.

Portrait of Frederick William Elwell by Mary Elwell (1913)

His year in London and his struggle to survive had taken a toll on him so the first thing the family had wanted him to do was to relax and enjoy the tranquillity of the Yorkshire countryside. Elwell also enjoyed the freedom offered by sailing and he would often take a small boat and cruise along Beverley Beck which joined the River Hull. Many like-minded painters would do the same as the clarity of light and the beautiful countryside including the East Riding flatlands surrounding the river was an idyllic setting for landscape artists. On occasion he would tie up the boat alongside a jetty and would welcome visitors to look at his artwork and, by so doing, would often receive commissions. Elwell’s love of landscape painting coincided with the English public’s change of attitude of what they wanted to see in a work of art. Depictions of city life were becoming less popular, displaced by depictions of the tranquillity of the countryside. This was a period when people wanted to “go back to nature”. They worked in cities but hankered for the fresh air of the countryside. They wanted to soak up country life by sailing along inland waterways or get themselves horse-drawn caravans and lose themselves in the peacefulness and serenity of the rural areas.

For complete tranquillity Elwell made his home on a houseboat which he had borrowed from a friend. Not only did he travel up and down the river he would tie up alongside a local hostelry, the Brigham Arms, and his boat acted as his own selling gallery. He also had a “gypsy-type” horse-drawn caravan in which he would wend his way around the country lanes, sketching the beauty of the area. His artwork which depicted the tranquillity and the beauty of the Yorkshire countryside sold well and soon both his health and his finances had improved significantly.

Fred Elwell would also take on portrait commissions and often would visit the client rather than have them come to his studio. It was in 1904, that he received a visit from Alfred Holmes, a luminary of the Beverley community. Holmes asked Elwell to paint a portrait of his wife, Mary. Elwell agreed and went to the Holmes’ family home where he met Mary Holmes for the first time.

Mary Dawson Holmes by Frederick William Elwell (1904)

Elwell completed the Portrait of Mary Dawson Holmes that year and had it exhibited at the Royal Academy. It is a beautiful work of portraiture with Mary shown as a lady of gracious elegance. Her clothes remind one of the French fashion of the time. We see her adorned in a tight-fitting dress finished off with a fine white lace collar. She tilts her head to one side but holds an upright stance. Her eyes are dark and almond-shaped. Her expression teases us into imagining her thoughts. Does she look a willing participant as a model for this portrait? There is a hint of reticence in her facial expression. Was she unwilling to sit for Elwell or was it simply that she was shy and slightly embarrassed with all the attention.

The depiction of Mary has often been compared to Renoir’s 1886 work Les Parapluies, which Elwell would have seen, because of the similarity between the way Mary stands, tilts her head, and similarly carries a basket.

In the Trossachs by Mary Elwell (c.1900)

Alfred and Mary Holmes became good friends of Fred Elwell and they even had joint ownership of a sailing boat and the three of them took many trips on the Beverley Beck to the upper reaches of the River Hull, a tributary of the Humber. The three of them would often travel to Europe, visiting Venice and Switzerland where Fred Elwell and Mary Holmes would take the opportunity to sketch and paint the local landscapes.

Mary had her work exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1904 onwards and in 1908 she completed one of her most famous works, The Wreath, which was on display at the 1909 Royal Academy annual exhibition. It depicts a recently widowed woman grieving for the loss of a loved one. Queen Victoria had died in 1901 and this solemn period and the Victorian period prior to her death saw many artists concentrate on human loss and the grief felt when a loved one died. Queen Victoria suffered the loss of her beloved husband, Albert in 1861, and continually wore mourning clothes for ten years after he died. Many paintings compared the happiness of life before the death of a loved one with the inconsolable grief of those left behind. Violet Prest, a local girl, a costumier of Minster Moorgate West, in Beverley, modelled the woman in the painting. Ironically, six years after the painting was completed, her husband was killed in the Great War.

She was a much-admired artist and her popularity as an artist and that of Fred Elwell rose amongst the public and the art critics. Mary, and her future husband, Elwell, as far as their artistic ability was concerned, should never be looked upon as pupil and master as was the dictate of social expectation in the early twentieth century. They were truly equals.

The health of Alfred Holmes began to deteriorate in 1910 and he sold his business and gave up his part ownership with Fred Elwell of their beloved sailing boat. That year May and Alfred moved from their large Westwood Road house in Beverley and bought Bar House which was also in Beverley, situated on North Bar Within. Alfred Holmes’ health had got so bad that by 1913 he realised he was dying and it is thought that due to his very close friendship with Fred Elwell he intimated that Elwell and Mary should get together when he died. George Alfred Holmes died on August 5th, 1913 aged just fifty-eight, leaving his widow comfortably provided for and allowing her to employ staff to help run the house.

North Bar Within, Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire by Mary Elwell. (1916)

Holmes’ dying wish with regards his wife and Fred Elwell came to fruition on September 28th, 1914 when they married, and Elwell came to live with his new wife at her beloved Bar House. In 1916 Mary Elwell painted a scene entitled North Bar Within, Beverley which depicted a view from the front steps of Bar House. It is interesting work set during an overcast day and one of predominantly brown tones.

At the Mirror or Bedroom, Bar House by Mary Elwell

Mary painted many depictions of Bar House including a bedroom scene, which was entitled At the Mirror. There are two large double beds each covered with a purple quilt. In the central background there is a large window which frames the view of Wylies House. The using of a window as a framing device for a townscape was very popular at the time and was typical of the practice of the Camden Town Group of artists. It allowed viewers to catch a glimpse of the outside world, seen through the framing device of a window. The large full-length mirror, next to the window, reveals a reflection of the room. The light which shines through the windows of the room lights it up and the polished brass fender casts its reflection on the dark polished wooden floor. To the right of the window, we see a young woman standing before a mirror attending to her hair. She is oblivious of the outside world that we see through the window. The model used by Mary for this work was Annie Towse, the daughter of one of their employees.

Mary’s mother, Mary Ellen Bishop had died in 1901 and Mary Elwell’s uncles Henry and Walter died in 1917 and 1924. Neither had married and their wealth and properties were divided between Mary Elwell and her sister Elsie. Mary also received her late uncle’s art collection.

One of my favourite interior works by Mary Elwell is one she completed in the 1932 entitled At No.14 Newbegin, Beverley with an alternative title Interior Study. It is a depiction of a sitting room at No.14 Newbegin a house belonging to Reverend Wigfall the curate at Beverley Minster, who we see sitting at his writing desk. The room itself was light due to it having three large windows. The window we see in the painting allows a shaft of light into the room illuminating the large ornately carved bookcase on top of which are three glass cases, each of which contain stuffed birds. A cushion with its bold design and rich colours is placed for decorative effect on the arm of the sofa. The richness of colour of this painting is brought about by the liberal use of reds. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1932.

Beverley Minster from the Friary, by Mary Elwell (1934)

Beverley Minster from the Friary is a painting Mary Elwell completed in 1934. It is a comparative composition. The imposing edifice of Beverley Minster looms over the modest dwellings we see in the middle ground, which lie close to the railway track. The gable ends of the houses in the middle ground seem to reiterate the shape of the Minster’s transept. Elwell captures the spirit of the time with her depiction of the washing lines laden with clothes in the back yards of the houses. One of the houses on the right was occupied by Miss Woodmansey who ran a wash-house and who would, after washing the clothes, hang them out in her back yard, every day except Sunday. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1934.

Matterhorn from Zermatt, Switzerland by Mary Elwell (1939)

In 1947 Mary suffered the first of a series of debilitating strokes which meant that she had to have round the clock nursing. Her sister Elsie came to stay for longer periods. Having made her final appearance at the Royal Academy in 1949, she withdrew from the world outside. Mary Dawson Elwell died on the 28th August 1952, aged a fortnight before her seventy-eighth birthday. She was buried in Saint Mary’s Cemetery in Beverley and according to her husband’s wish her gravestone was carved with an artist’s palette.. Her second husband, Fred Elwell died in January 1958 and was laid to rest in the same grave.

Fred Elwell gave a number of her paintings away to people who had cared for her, inscribing them:

“…in grateful remembrance of Mary D. Elwell…”