Female artists – my daily art display

Emma Hilma Amalia Löwstädt-Chadwick

The artist I am looking at today was one of several successful Swedish female artists who spent time studying in Paris during the 1880s. Her artwork was displayed every year at the great Paris Salons as well as in Sweden. Let me introduce you to Emma Hilma Amalia Löwstädt-Chadwick.

Portrait of Emma by her husband by Francis Brooks Chadwick

Emma Hilma Amalia Löwstädt was born in Stockholm on August 10^th, 1855. Her father was Carl Rudolf Löwstädt, a well-off and well-respected businessman whose successful business acumen had made him one of Stockholm’s leading tailors. Rudolf was a fervent and active communist, who had adopted his political stance during his time as an apprentice in Paris where he had become friends with the philosopher Etienne Cabet. Emma’s mother was Carolina née Nordqvist. Emma’s paternal grandfather was Carl Theodor Löwstädt, a painter of miniatures, an illustrator, and a lithographer.

Eva Löwstädt-Åström portrait by her sister Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick

Emma Löwstädt was the second eldest of five children. Her mother Carolina died when Emma was just nine years old, a few weeks after she had given birth to her youngest child, Eva. Eva later went on to also become a well-known artist, Eva Löwstädt-Åström.

French landscape shepherd with pigs by Emma Lowstadt Chadwick

Emma loved to paint and draw as a young girl and her father, who had once hoped to become a painter, encouraged her in her artistic pursuits. His support and his financial resources meant that he could help his daughter, not just financially, but also through assisting her in every way he could whilst she resided abroad. Emma started her artistic education at the Technical School, then studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1874 to 1880.

Interior with woman by Emma Lowstadt Chadwick

Her classmates included aspiring, and soon to be well-known, artists such as Julia Beck, Carolina Benedicks-Bruce, Eva Bonnier, Mina Carlson-Bredberg, Karin Larsson, and Jenny Nyström. Emma shone as a student, gained approving attention for her artwork and won many prizes in the annual competitions held by the Royal Swedish Academy of Art.

Off to Sea by Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick

During the summer of 1879 Emma spent time on the Breton coast where she was able to practice the new French trends of Impressionism and painting en plein air. Her motifs included flocks of sheep, at the seaside as well as depicting the lives of people who lived in the northern coastal towns of France. This style of painting which Emma embraced was so different from what she had been taught and had practiced at the Royal Swedish Academy of Art.

Beach Parasol, Brittany (Portrait of Amanda Sidwall) by Emma Löwstäd (1880)

One of her most famous paintings whilst she was travelling around the towns on the Brittany coast was entitled Beach Parasol, Brittany (Portrait of Amanda Sidwall), which she completed in 1880. It depicted her friend Amanda Stilwell painting en plein air on the beach. Amanda Sitwell, like Emma, had studied at the women’s department of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts and then gone to Paris to continued her studies under Tony-Robert Fleury at the Académie Julian.

The Card Party by Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick

In 1880 Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick returned to Paris from Brittany and enrolled at Académie Julian, which, at the time, was one of the few private schools which accepted female students. Emma’s teachers were Jean-Charles Cazin and Tony Robert-Fleury. During her first year as a student one of her paintings was accepted for display at the Paris Salon, This, to her, was a great achievement, as all artists fought to get their work accepted at such a prestigious event. Acceptance was a form of recognition, which could lead to public mentions as well as gold and silver medals. Her paintings were accepted at the Salon every year throughout the 1880’s and into the 1890’s and her works would be at the Salon as late as in 1924. In 1887 she received special mention at the Salon for her painting entitled Five o’clock tea.

Woman and Child by Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick

Emma Löwstädt, after completing her studies at Académie Julian in Paris, travelled south to the village of Grez-sur-Loing. Beautiful landscapes had always played a prominent part in the artistic education of the painter and Grez had that beauty in abundance. Grez-sur-Loing had once been an artistic retreat for American and British artists during the latter years of the 1870’s, but later became the focal point for the Scandinavian, although predominantly Swedish, artists. From 1880 until the turn-of-the-century, the colony at Grez-sur-Loing thrived, providing an abundant source of inspiration for Swedish artists, all of whom sought an escape from the hustle-and-bustle of life in the French capital.

Portrait of her husband, Francis Chadwick by Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick

It was whilst living in Grez-sur-Loing that Emma met the wealthy Bostonian painter, Francis Chadwick , who was an important and innovative figure in the American art world in the late nineteenth century. Chadwick was a portrait, figure and landscape painter, and he became part of the expatriate American art community at Grez. Emma and Chadwick eventually fell in love and in 1882 the couple married.

Pension Laurent in Grez-sur-Loing by Elias Erdtman (1886)

They had a house built there and later purchased Pension Laurent, which was one of only two boarding houses in Grez-sur-Loing. Emma’s husband was a wealthy man which allowed the couple to live a carefree life, and they travelled together on many painting-trips to a variety of countries such as America, Spain, North Africa, Italy, and Great Britain, providing new motifs for Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick’s paintings.

Resting by Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick

Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick had her work exhibited at the World’s Fairs held in Paris in 1889 and in 1900 and she received an “honourable mention” in 1889 for her painting entitled Fångvakterska. More of her work appeared at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 part of a group exhibition by twenty Swedish female artists exhibiting there in The Women’s Building. With her husband she lived an expatriate artistic life moving between Cornwall, London and France, where they spent much time with the artists’ colony at Grez sur Loing.

Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick depicted in Swedish Journal, Idun nr 50, 1892.

In later life, she had transitioned from painting to etching and her graphics were popular with Parisian collectors. Her motifs for her etchings were much the same as for her painting: genre pictures with peasants and fishermen and quiet interiors, but she also executed a series of very suggestive Paris images.

The Young Mother by Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick

In 1885, Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick was one of 84 artists who signed up to the Opponentrörelsen (Opponent Movement), a protest against the stultified Royal Swedish Academy of Art and its teaching methodology. The protest group was led by Ernst Josephson and in 1885, the members submitted their written demands to the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts for a modernization and reform of art education, exhibition activities and support for artists. The demands were rejected by the Academy and so the group formed the the Konstnärsförbundet (‘the Artists’ Association’) and the following year, Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick joined the group and took part in several of their exhibitions.

Sleeping Child by Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick

My favourite painting by Emma is her 1885 work entitled Sleeping Child. Emma has managed to capture the sleeping figure in an immediate and moving manner. In a way, it is a study of the vulnerability of small children in our culture. Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick, through the medium of her paintings, wanted to study the home, human relations and our basic need for mutual recognition. It is truly a beautiful depiction of an innocent child.

Portrait of a Girl (thought to be one of her daughters) by Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick

Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick died in Avignon on January 2nd 1932, aged 76.

Zdenka Rosalina Augusta Braunerová

In my blog today I am looking at the life and works of the nineteenth century Czech painter, Zdenka Rosalina Augusta Braunerová. Her views and lifestyle influenced many painters and writers, many of whom were her friends. She became a patron of many artists, but she also supported folk art, especially in Moravian Slovakia and Horňácko. She was graceful and educated, and also extremely talented. She decided to devote her whole life to painting and graphics and never regretted it. She almost married several times and yet died unmarried. The life of this girl from a good family was unconventional, but definitely interesting.

A Bend in the Vlatava River by Zdenka Braunerová

Zdenka was born in Prague on April 9^th 1858 and was baptized as Zdislava Rosalina Augusta. She was born into a wealthy family and was the last of four children of the well-known Czech politician and prominent lawyer, František August Brauner and his wife Augusta, née Neumannová She had two older brothers, Vladamir and Bohuslav and an older sister, Anna. Zdenka showed interest in drawing and painting since her childhood, when she spent long hours in her children’s room, where she spent hours painting. She was encouraged to paint by her mother, who was herself an amateur painter and who came from an old noble family.

View at Brod by Amálie Mánesová,

Zdenka’s parents further encouraged their daughters interest in art and sent Zdenka to study with Amálie Mánesová, a talented landscape artist who ran a private painting school for ladies and girls from aristocratic and bourgeois families. This early art education, like the teaching of young children to play a musical instrument, was common for children in families of similar status at that time. It was part of the fashionable manner in which young girls became young ladies. Zdenka loved to paint and draw so much so that her normal schoolwork suffered and she received mediocre grades for her school work. Notwithstanding this deterioration of her exam results, Zdenka pressed on with her art tuition at a girls’ college, where the director was the prominent Czech painter, Soběslav Hipplolyt Pinkas.

One of her tutors was Antonin Chitussi, a Czech Impressionist landscape and cityscape painter, and he was unclear as to whether painting to Zdenka was merely a hobby and not a future profession and, in truth, Zdenka was also undecided as to whether painting or her singing would become a future pathway. Antonín Chittussi was not only one of her first art teachers, he was her first love and during her time with him she devoted herself mainly to landscape painting. Chittussi introduced her to the technical secrets of drawing and painting, urging her to diligence, study nature and the right choice of motifs. Zdenka wanted to move the relationship with Chittussi to another level, that of an equal union of two independent artists who would inspire each other. This was a step too far for Chittussi and the relationship died.

Following the the death of her father in 1880, Zdeňka began attending the Académie Colarossi in Paris. Here her teacher was Francoise Courtoise, with whom she concentrated mainly on figurative and historical painting.

Élémir Bourges and the two Brauner sisters – 1883

After her sister Anne’s marriage to the French writer Élémir Bourges, Zdenka adapted her lifestyle to her future profession as a painter. She often travelled between Paris and Prague, still attending the Colarossi School and at the same time wanting to be close to her mother back home in Prague.

Julius Zeyer

Another of her many relationships came three years later with a young poet, Julius Zeyer, an artist seventeen years her junior, but maybe because of the age difference, this was not a long-lasting liaison. Another reason according to some historians, was that Julius Zeyer was homosexual and his relationship with the very attractive Zdenka remained only platonic.

Vilém Mrštík

In the spring of 1894 in Oslavany, the thirty-one-year-old Czech playwright and literary critic Vilém Mrštík met thirty-six-year-old Zdenka Braunerová. She was five years older than him, which was somewhat strange as previously Vilém only had relationships with much younger women. Mrštík actually perceived her as an old lady describing her as:

“…An interesting person, she has enough of the world, enough of Prague, and with all the fire a lady approaching old virginity, but still strong and with the lush decoration of the former beauty…”

Brauner was equally scathing about Mrštík either, saying:

“….He is not pretty. The nose is plebeian, the eyes small, black, short-sighted with a stud, and the mouth with strong lips…”

Landscape near Tabor by Zdenka Braunerová.

Suprisingly, a relationship developed between them. It was not an even relationship as Zdenka was cautious at first and only considered friendship. But Mrštík, fell in love with Zdenka and the “friendship” developed into a love affair. The well-educated Brauner was probably attracted to Mrštík by his goodness, earthiness and often violent reactions. She tended to choose men who were painful, complex, and depressed. Zdenka had a habit of wanting to protect, educate and form men in her own way. She was manipulative and looked upon men as being people she could mould into her perfect person. This was not the basis of a long-lasting relationship and was doomed. However, she thought Mrštík would be different. Mrštík was not the intellectual type and unlike her, did not discuss art passionately. He was an earthy Moravian. To Zdenka, he even seemed naïve but this trait endeared him to her but the relationship was doomed.

St Lawrence on Petrin Hill by Zdenka Braunerova

In early 1896, Mrštík even began to talk about marriage and Zdenka agreed but they broke up in March 1897, just before the wedding, . They finally separated. Mrštík was convinced that he had fallen in love with an idea and not the woman. He became very bitter with the break-up and in an ungentlemanly way he said various unpleasant things about Zdenka – about her overripe old virginity and few talents in the intimate area. Zdenka, in turn, stated that his writing to be inferior. It was not an edifying ending to the affair

VEČERNÍ KRAJINA by Zdenka Braunerova

Although having attended the private Collarossi Academy, she was not satisfied with the tuition and returned to her homeland. Zdenka was still extremely interested and found inspiration in French art, but still retained the patriotism for her country. The more time she spent in Paris the more she missed her homeland. In Paris, with her sense of patriotism, she would dance in Czech costume and sang Czech national songs, and by doing so, she would move closer to the Czech culture and art. This love of her homeland inspired many French artists and helped forge lasting friendships there. One such artist who was swayed by Zdenka’s love of her homeland was Auguste Rodin who visited Bohemia and Moravia at her invitation in 1905.

Brauner’s Mill in Solutions

Zdenka often spent time working in a studio in Solutions, a small town, west of Prague. Her studio was in the so-called Brauner’s mill.

Zdenka Braunerová lived in Prague’s Lesser Town in Všehrdova Street. She died there on May 23rd 1934, aged 76, and is buried in the Vyšehrad cemetery.

Helen Allingham

When depicting life in rural England, artists had to decide whether their depictions would focus on the hard lives endured by the peasant workers or focus on the beautiful idyllic life folk had who managed to escape the industrialization of the cities. The artist I am looking at today was of the second group of painters who wanted to cast her artistic spotlight on the beauty of rural life and was well known for her depictions of country cottages. Let me introduce you to Helen Allingham.

Helen Mary Elizabeth Paterson was born into a well-to-do middle-class family on September 26th, 1848 in the small village of Swadlincote, near Burton on Trent in Derbyshire, England. She was the eldest of seven children born to Alexander Henry Paterson, a rural physician, and Mary Chance Herford, the daughter of a Manchester wine merchant. Within her first year of her life, the Patersons moved to Altrincham, Cheshire where Helen’s father set up a medical practice and the young family grew and prospered. It was during these years that young Helen’s interest and talent in art blossomed, inspired by her maternal grandmother, Sarah Smith Herford, a landscape painter and her aunt, Laura Herford, a professional and accomplished artist.

*The Little Emigrant by Laura Herford (1868)*

One of Laura Herford’s most endearing paintings is her The Little Emigrant which she completed in 1868. It depicts a young girl seated on the deck of a ship, with her head resting on her hands, her right arm on the ship’s railing. She has golden hair, wears a maroon dress with red and white striped neck scarf. The work was painted by Laura after her visit to Auckland and Nelson. The idea of the depiction is believed to be after Laura had listened to an account by a real emigrant to New Zealand on the siling ship, Lord Auckland, when as a child she remembered sitting for days and weeks on the seat that ran round the waist of the ship, under the high bulwarks, looking out over the wide, wide sea. She sat there dreaming of the homeland to which she would never return.

In her twenties Laura Herford was heavily drawn into the argument of the recognition and training of female artists. She signed the 1859 petition to admit women to the Royal Academy. She submitted several drawings to the Academy’s admissions tutors signed “L. Herford“. The use of initials masked her gender, leading to the assumption that she was a man. She was admitted on the merits of these drawings and an offer was made to “L. Herford, Esq” and she took up her place at the Academy in 1860 !!! She exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1861 to 1869 and also at the Suffolk Street Gallery and the British Institution. Later, she invited her sister’s daughter, the painter Helen Paterson Allingham, to come live with her in London at the start of her career.

Helen’s mother, Mary was also an artist but gave it up when she married. Helen’s father’s medical practice failed and the family moved out of the small rural community, which Mary never liked, and relocated to Altrincham, Mary’s hometown. Her husband purchased another medical practice in the town. The new practice thrived and soon the family could afford to have a house built in the countryside at Bowden.

Helen Paterson attended the Unitarian boarding school, once attended by her mother and which had been founded by her grandmother, Sarah Smith Herford. In May 1862, when Helen was aged thirteen, tragedy struck her family. Her father battled to treat local victims during a severe diphtheria epidemic. Dr. Paterson succumbed to the disease himself, along with Helen’s three-year-old sister Isabel.

Shortly after the death of the father, the young family moved to Edgbaston, Birmingham where their Paterson aunts helped house and feed them, but money was tight. As time passed, Helen’s artistic talents grew and she enrolled in the Birmingham School of Design. Here for fifteen shillings a term, she studied Drawing, Perspective, Practical Geometry and Painting, three times a week. After three years of study, Helen won the School’s Special Prize, given to her for her outstanding anatomical studies. The School was so impressed with her talent they advised her to apply to the Royal Academy Schools.

*Spring on the Kentish Downs by Helen Allingham*

At age seventeen, Helen secured a place in the Royal Female School of Art in London. A year later, in 1867, she was accepted into the prestigious Royal Academy Schools, a door first opened to women by Helen’s aunt Laura just a few years before. The Royal Academy Schools boasted a number of highly thought of masters of the art world who visited and taught the students. Helen Paterson was influenced the most by the lectures and tuition given by Frederick Walker, Sir Frederick Leighton, and Sir John Everett Millais, who was a co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. The tuition at the Royal Academy was free, but Helen still needed money to pay for her accommodation and living expenses. With that in mind, she sought work with engraving firms, sketching figures and scenes in black & white, and in 1869 was commissioned by the Once A Week magazine, a weekly illustrated literary magazine to contribute four full-page illustrations. Her work was well received, and this led to more commissions by other periodicals and children’s books while she continued her schooling three days a week.

*Beneath the Cherry Tree by Helen Allingham*

In 1870, twenty-two-year-old Helen was hired as one of the founding staff members, and the only female, on The Graphic, a British high-quality weekly illustrated newspaper, first published in December 1869. During the next three years, commissions to illustrate books and periodicals continued to pour in and by 1872 Helen decided to give up her schooling at the Academy and work as a commercial artist. Some of her most important commissions included illustrations for Thomas Harding’s fourth novel, Far From the Madding Crowd which was first published in 1874.

Two sudden and unexpected deaths in the early 1870’s greatly saddened Helen. In October 1870 she was summoned from her lodgings by William De Morgan who was concerned that his fellow lodger at Fitzroy Square, Laura Herford, had not been seen that day. He knew that Helen was a relative of Laura Herford and so when the two went back and entered Laura’s lodgings they found her lying dead in bed. She had been suffering from constant toothache and be self-medicating with morphine and it was thought that she had died from an accidental overdose. She was thirty-nine-years-old.

*Louisa Paterson by Helen Allingham* *(1871)*

One year later, in November 1871 Helen was summoned home. On returning to the family in Cheshire she was told that her eighteen-year-old sister Louisa was dying of consumption. There was little Helen could do but help the family at this sad time and sit with her sister and help her mother nurse her dying sister. During the times Helen sat at her sister’s bedside she made several pencil sketches of Louisa and one small and emotional watercolour of her.

Now in London and because of her commissions, Helen’s circle of friends grew and she came into contact with prominent writers and artists. One such friend was William Allingham, the editor of Fraser’s Magazine. William Allingham was born on 19 March 19th 1824 in Ballyshannon, a small town in the south of County Donegal in Ulster in the north of Ireland, which is now in the Republic of Ireland. He was the son of the manager of a local bank who was of English descent. When William was nineteen, he became a Customs officer, and he was stationed at different places in Northern Ireland until he was thirty-nine years old. Shortly after he obtained his appointment with the Customs, he made his first trip to London and after that first visit, made many more to the English capital. He would submit many articles to London’s periodicals. He retired from the Civil Service in 1870 and moved to London and sub-editor of Fraser’s Magazine under J. A. Froude, whom he succeeded as editor in 1874. It was also in 1874, on August 22^nd, that Allingham and Helen Paterson were married after the briefest of engagements. He was fifty and she was a month away from her twenty-sixth birthday. William Allingham had developed many good friends in London’s literary and artistic circles such as Thomas Carlyle, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, John Ruskin, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

*Portrait of William Allingham by Helen Allingham (1874)*

A few months after their marriage, Helen Allingham painted a portrait of her husband.

The newly weds went to live in a house at Trafalgar Square, in the borough of Chelsea, close to William Allingham’s best friend, the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher, Thomas Carlyle. Such was their close friendship that William had taken Helen to visit Carlyle before they married, just to make sure Carlyle approved of his choice of wife ! Helen and William became regular visitors to Thomas Carlyle’s home in London and after many preliminary sketches completed a painting of their good friend. Look at how Helen has incorporated all the details of the furnishings of Carlyle’s room.

*The Interior of Thomas Carlyle’s Dining Room by Helen Allingham (1881)*

Helen’s other paintings depicted the interior of Carlyle’s rooms at his residence in Cheyne Row London. It is said that such an accurate depiction of the room aided the National Trust when they came to the restoration of the room.

Married life suited Helen and she no longer had to go out to work. She gave up her position at the Graphic and in a way she had been pleased to have worked at the journal for four years and it had allowed her to regularly send money to her mother. Although working for the Graphic had been advantageous, Helen was pleased to be able to concentrate on her paintings, especially her watercolours and she did manage to do some freelance book illustrations for novels written by her friends, George Elliot, Thoams Hardy and Tennyson.

*A Cottage with Sunflowers at Peaslake by Helen Allingham*

In November 1875 Helen gave birth to her first child, a son, Gerald Carlyle named after her and her husband’s good friend. In February 1877 a second child, a daughter, Eva Margaret, was born. Her third child, a son, Henry William was born in 1882. He was the love of Helen’s life and she would often wear a locket with just his picture inside. In 1874 Helen Allingham had two of her watercolours, The Milkmaid and Wait for Me, exhibited at the Royal Academy and in 1875 she was put forward by the eminent watercolourist, Alfred Hunt, to become an Associate in the Royal Watercolour Society. She was later to become the first woman to be admitted to full membership.

*Harvest Moon by Helen Allingham (1879)*

Her early work tended to feature large figures in a landscape, but later, influenced by their holidays in the country, her style shifted more to smaller figures with emphasis on the rural scene itself. During the seven years the Allinghams lived in London, Helen exhibited more than a hundred watercolours, some depicting her own children as models. During her early days, Helen produced rural depictions featuring large figures. However, in her later paintings she focused on the inanimate and nature itself and any figures depicted were much smaller.

On February 5^th 1881, after a short illness, Helen and William’ close friend, Thomas Carlyle died, aged 85. His death came as a terrible shock to them and now that he was not a close neighbour any more, they felt no reason to stay in the English capital. They decided to move into the country and settled in the small Surrey hamlet of Sandhills. It was from this new base that Helen developed the love of depicting pretty cottages. Sandhills proved to be an idyllic and peaceful resting place for both Helen and William. He was able to spend time writing poetry and Helen passed the hours painting watercolours depicting the rural areas around their home, the numerous pretty flower gardens, her children as they grew up and of course the “chocolate-box” country cottages which were all around where they lived. As the boom of industrial development continued to threaten traditional rural life, Allingham’s paintings captured unblemished landscapes and historic cottage architecture in superb detail. Helen was fervently concerned for the preservation of the English countryside and this love of hers was also held by the viewing public. In 1886 Helen was invited by the Fine Arts Society to hold a one-woman exhibition with the title Surrey Cottages.

*A Cottage near Brook, Witley, Surrey by Helen Allingham*

Helen’s depiction of the old, thatched cottages was not just an act of sentimentality but it was to remind people of what life was like before the railways built their tracks through acres of beautiful land and with the arrival of the railways came the hordes of middle-class families into rural communities. Some bought the cottages and refurbished them while others demolished them and built modern monstrosities. For Helen, the task was to memorialise the beauty and tranquillity of rural life and the exquisiteness of the country cottage which she depicted with such accuracy. She would roam the countryside and paint en plein air the cottages which were marked for demolition. She would add small figures to the scenes and sometimes would substitute thatch rooves to depictions of cottages which had been modernised with man-made materials but at the same time tried to avoid the idealistic depictions.

In 1888, Helen’s husband William became ill with persistent indigestion and the couple decided to move away from the countryside and return to London to be close to family friends. They took up residence in Hampstead in a large home in Eldon Road. William Allingham’s health continued to deteriorate and despite an operation in the Spring of 1889, he died that November, aged 65, leaving Helen, then forty-one, to support herself and three young children, aged fourteen, twelve, and seven. In 1891 Helen and her children travelled to the Irish town of Ballyshannon where their father, William was born and laid to rest. A monument had been erected in honour of their late father and Mary took the opportunity to visit some of his relations. She also painted a number of watercolours of the landscape and the peasant cottages.

In 1890 the Royal Society of Watercolours opened their membership to women, and Helen had the honour of being the first elected into the Society. Helen exhibited her scenic country watercolours every year in London and her depictions of rural cottage scenes grew in popularity. In 1903 Helen collaborated with Marcus B. Huish for a book about English country life titled Happy England, which featured eighty colour plates of Helen’s watercolours.

In 1905 she and her brother, Arthur Paterson, collaborated to produce a book entitled “The Homes of Tennyson” which contained twenty of her paintings. More books followed including editing several books of her late husband’s poetry. Helen continued to paint and exhibit her work. On September 28th, 1926, two days after her seventy-eighth birthday, Helen Allingham died of a acute peritonitis while visiting an old friend at Valewood House in Haslemere, just a few miles from her old country home in Sandhills.

Most of the information for this blog came from the

Susan Catherine Moore Waters

Today I am delving into the life of the nineteenth century American painter Susan Waters. It is difficult to compartmentalise her artwork, some, however, have labelled her a folk portraitist. It is a mixture of portraiture which could be best described as quirky and animal paintings. Her art, especially her early portraiture, is certainly easily recognisable as you will see. I like its simplicity and although she will never be regarded as one of the American great artists, her depictions ooze a naiveté which is so endearing.

Susan Catherine Moore was born on May 18^th 1823 in Binghamton, a small town in the Southern Tier of New York state on the border with Pennsylvania. She was one of two children, both daughters, of a cooper, Lark Moore, and his wife, Sally, who were Hicksite Quakers. As a young child Susan showed a talent for art.

Two Children in *an Interior Setting, One Child Holding a Grey Cat, the Other Holding a Piece of Melon* *by Susan Waters*

Susan and her sister, Amelia, attended the fee-paying Boarding School for Females run by Quakers at the small Pennsylvania border town of Friendsville. The town had been founded in 1819 and the majority of early settlers were Quakers. At the age of fifteen, in order to afford to pay the fees for the school for her and her sister, Susan would paint copies for the Natural History course run by the school. Although the school had basic art education lessons, Susan is considered to be a self-taught painter.

*The Downs Children of Cannonsville, New York. by Susan Waters (1843)*

On 27 June 1841, aged just eighteen, she married William C. Waters, a Friendsville Quaker and amateur artist, and he would encourage his young wife to develop her talent as a painter. She took up portraiture about 1843, when her husband became ill and was unable to support the family. She would travel around the outlying areas painting and selling portraits of the people and their children. One of Susan’s earliest recorded signed paintings is her 1843 work entitled The Downs Children of Cannonsville, New York. It depicts two children with a dog and a toy wagon in a landscape setting which includes a white house in the background. The boy on the left holds a riding crop.

*Helen M Kingman by Susan Waters (1845)*

In 1845, Susan completed a set of three paintings featuring the Kingman family. This signed and dated portrait of fifteen-year-old Helen M Kingman is one of the three works. The young girl is depicted seated in a stencilled chair, wearing a salmon pink dress, against a grey-walled backdrop. Note the potted plant on the windowsill, an accoutrement often seen in portraits of children.

Another in the series is a portrait of Lyman Kingman dressed in a black suit, holding sheets of paper. Behind him are shelves of books at right and drapery at upper left.

*The Lincoln Children by Susan Waters (1845)*

In the 1840s Susan specialized in portraits of children, and this 1845 painting, The Lincoln Children, is a depiction of three of the twelve children of Otis Lincoln, an innkeeper who was plying his trade in the small rural town of Binghamton in New York State. The three small girls are Laura Eugenie, aged nine, Sara, aged three, and Augusta, aged seven and they have been positioned in a pyramid. They are all wearing decorative dresses, adorned with eyelet and lace. One of the girls holds a peach, another a small branch in one hand and a pencil in the other while the third has a book open upon her knee. These trappings were added to the portrait to publicise the girls’ sweetness and their attentiveness whilst attending school. The fine-looking furnishings including an expensive floral-patterned carpet, the pretty plants on a stand in the right background, and the addition of the appealing puppy with its well-arranged stance coalesce and create a lovely image of domestic stability and cosiness and yet their intense expressions as they look out at us gives the painting a disconcerting openness.

*Herding Sheep before the Storm by Susan Waters*

The Waters’ life was complicated, flitting from one temporary home to another. They continued to reside in Friendsville for several years, but by May of 1852 they had moved to Bordentown, New Jersey. They built themselves a cottage in the Quaker community of Bordentown and although they did not settle there permanently at that time, they would return to their house in 1866.

*Chicken and Raspberries by Susan Waters*

The couple sold their Bordentown cottage and journeyed to Mount Pleasant, Iowa, in 1855, returned to Friendsville four years later, and in 1866 finally resettled in Bordentown buying back their former home on Mary Street and it was here that they spent the rest of their lives. This was a base from which she taught art and produced over fifty of her later works, many of which were painting of animals in their natural settings, especially her favourite animals, sheep, and pastoral scenes. She was also an early photographer and produced many ambrotypes and daguerreotypes, which were early forms of photography. This made a lot of practical sense, as commissioned portraits were giving way to the more exciting medium of photography.

Many of the animals depicted were kept in Susan’s own yard.

*Rooster with two Chickens in the Yard by Susan Waters.*

Whilst residing in Bordentown Susan Waters painted animal and still life pictures in a style which was more mature and academic than her earlier efforts at portraiture. There was a greater sophistication with her depictions.

*A Cache of Raspberries by Susan Waters*

Susan also produced a number of excellent still-life paintings

*Still life with Grapes by Susan Waters*

and sometimes a combined still-life and animal depiction as in her work entitled The Marauders.

The artwork she produced and sold whilst living in Bordentown earned her recognition in her own lifetime. It was not just from within her local community but from outside and in 1876, Waters was honoured with an invitation to exhibit some of her paintings at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. It was the first official World’s Fair to be held in the United States. She submitted two of her animal paintings.

*Lighthouse on the Coast by Susan Waters*

Susan Waters also became active in State politics when she became a member of the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association, which was founded in 1867. It was in this year that Lucy Stone delivered a speech on “Women Suffrage in New Jersey” before the state legislature. This would have been a thrilling time to be involved with the movement, and Susan was elected recording secretary for the Association in 1871. She was also an Animal Rights activist.

*Pasture scene with cows and distant mountains* *by Susan Waters*

After exhibiting successfully at the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, Susan discovered that her work was much sought after and it remained so for the rest of her life. Her husband died in 1893 and from then on Susan dedicated herself to her art. In 1899 she had to sell her home and go to a nursing home in Trenton New Jersey. On July 10^th 1900 Susan Catherine Moore Waters passed away at the age of seventy-seven. Three days later she was buried alongside her beloved husband, William in the beautiful Bordentown cemetery. Of her character, her obituary noted:

“…as beautiful as her paintings … her talent she could not bequeath…”

The folks of Bordentown will remember Susan Waters as a lady of refinement, modest and unassuming. She was a lady of extraordinary ability, not just as a painter but as a writer and a speaker in the Society of Friends.

The Hayllar Family

Having recently looked at the Barnes School, the Williams family of English painters featuring a father and his six sons, I am today looking at another talented English family of painters featuring a father and his four daughters. Let me introduce you to the Hayllars.

James Hayllar, the patriarch.

*James Hayllar, photograph by David Wylkie Wynfield (c.1860’s)*

The patriarch of the Hayllar family was James Hayllar who was born in the West Sussex town of Chichester in 1829. Despite parental opposition he decided to become an artist and, aged thirteen, enrolled at Cary’s Art School in 1842. Francis Stephen Cary, a noted historical painter, who had once taught Rossetti and Millais, had become a pupil at Henry Sass’ Art Academy, and he, on the death of Henry Sass, took over the running of the academy in Bloomsbury and it then became known as Cary’s Art School.

An 1851 pencil and chalk portrait of Stephen Cary by James Hayllar is in London’s National Portrait Gallery.

*Cimabue’s Madonna by Frederic Lord Leighton (1853-1855)*

On completing his studies at Cary’s Art School, Hayllar travelled to Europe and made a tour of the continental countries. In 1851, whilst in Rome he met Frederic Leighton. It is believed that Hayllar appears as one of the figures in Leighton’s monumental (2m x 5m) masterpiece, Cimabue’s Madonna, which he worked on between 1853 and 1855.

*Granville Sharp the abolitionist rescuing a slave from the hands of his master by James Hayllar (1864)*

Granville Sharp, who was born in 1735, was a scholar who campaigned for social justice. In 1787, with his fellow Anglican Thomas Clarkson and a group of Quakers, Sharp founded the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Sharp supported the resettlement of British and Canadian slaves to Sierra Leone, but despite reports about its moral decline and the resurgence of slave trading in the colony, maintained the view that the project was worthwhile. James Hayllar’s 1864 painting Granville Sharp the abolitionist rescuing a slave from the hands of his master, depicts an event which occurred in 1765 and is based on Sharp’s involvement with the Abolitionist movement. In 1765 Sharp met Jonathan Strong, a slave seeking treatment for injuries sustained at the hands of his owner. Sharp took up Strong’s case and secured his release from prison when he was arrested as an escaped slave. Following this success Sharp began to research the legal status of slaves in Britain and argued on behalf of a number of slaves in court, which is why the background of Hayllar’s painting has the legal setting.

*Miss Lily’s Carriage stops the Way by James Hayllar (1866)*

Hayllar exhibited his work at the Royal Academy focusing on literary and historical genre but by 1866 he changed tack and began a series of extremely well-liked genre studies of children and he completed a three painting series depicting a child attending a formal party. The first of these was Miss Lily’s Carriage stops the Way. In the first painting, Hayllar depicts a young child having her cloak adjusted before she makes an appearance at her first party.

*Miss Lily’s First Flirtation by James Hayllar (1866)*

In the second work, entitled The First Flirtation, we see the same young girl, Lily, enjoying herself at the party as she makes the acquaintance of a young boy similar in age to herself.

*The Return from the Ball by James Hayllar (1866)*

In the third painting entitled The Return from the Ball, Lily is seen being carried from the party by her mother, although her eyes are still open as she rests her head on her mother’s shoulder and we can see that the evening party has tired her out. She still manages to clutch her lace fan in her silk gloved hand.

*Castle Priory Wallingford, home to artist James Hayllar and his daughters,*

The series was well received and his standing as an artist rose. His name was put forward as an Associate of the Royal Academy by William Powell Frith and Eyre Crowe, but he missed being elected by one vote and being very despondent regarding the outcome, never tried again. Having given up hope of becoming an Academician he distanced himself from the Academy circle and also distanced himself from the English capital and London life in general and moved from his St Pancras home and settled down in the rural part of Suffolk at Carlton Rookery near the town of Saxmundham and in 1875 moved to the county of Berkshire and the town of Wallingford where he rented Castle Priory, a large house on the banks of the Thames.

James Hayllar had married Ellen Phoebe Cavell in 1855 and the couple went on to have nine children, five daughters, Jessica Ellen in 1858, Edith Parvin in 1860, Eugenie Grace in 1861, Alexandra Mary in 1862 and Beatrice Kate in 1864. They also had four sons, their first-born child, William Ernest in 1855, Reginald James in 1857 and their two youngest children, Thomas and Algernon in 1866 and 1868.

Both parents and children led an exceptionally happy family life and they often played host to visiting neighbours and cousins. The days were filled with games of tennis as well as artistic endeavour. The house was to provide his family with inspiration for their paintings.

*The Only Daughter by James Hayllar (1875)*

They were a very close family and of course, at a certain age, they would leave home and it is thought that James Hayllar’s 1875 painting entitled The Only Daughter was a reminder to him of the sad day when he “lost” one of his daughters. The painting depicts an only daughter standing between her beloved father and the man who was to be her future husband. His role in the young lady’s life would be to take over the protective mantle, once the role of her father and this successional responsibility is made plain by placing his head between the portraits of past generations on the wall behind him.

Hayller lived at Castle Priory until the death of his wife in 1899. He them went to live in Bournemouth where he stayed until his death in 1920, aged 91.

The daughters of James Hayllar.

Jessica Hayllar

Of the nine children James and Ellen had, five were daughters and it was the female members of the family that followed in the footsteps of their father. James Hayllar and his wife’s third-born child was their first daughter, Jessica.

*Fresh from the Altar by Jessica Hayllar (1890)*

Jessica Hayllar was born on September 16^th 1858. She studied under her father and began to exhibit her art in 1879 and at the Royal Academy from 1880 to 1915. In the early days, up until 1900, her work was mainly depictions of domestic scenes of everyday life at Castle Priory. Her genre scenes were described as being ones which were full of genuine charm. For her models she nearly always used members of her family.

The Hallway with Potted Palms by Jessica Hayler (1882)

In 1900 she was badly injured in a carriage accident and was partially paralysed and confined to a wheelchair. From that moment the subject of her paintings changed and she started to paint floral still life works which often featured azaleas.

*A Double Pink Azalea by Jessica Hayllar*

Jessica Hayllar lived with her parents throughout her life and never married. When her father left Castle Priory and went to live in Bournemouth she went with him. Following her father’s death in 1920, Jessica moved to Surrey to live with her younger sister Edith Hayllar MacKay.

*A Sunny Corner by Jessica Hayllar (1909)*

Jessica Hayllar died on November 7^th 1940, aged 82.

Alexandra Mary Hayllar

In comparison to her four sisters, Alexandra Mary Hayllar was the least prolific, and unlike her sisters, she only exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1880 to 1885. Her paintings were mainly still life works or genre pieces which featured children.

*Lawn Tennis Season by Mary Hayllar (1881)*

Despite her lesser output of work in comparison to that of her sisters, Mary was extremely gifted and like her sisters, she took pleasure in pictorially depicting the domestic life of the Berkshire countryside, as lived at her parents’ house, Castle Priory, Wallingford

*The Tennis Party by Alexandra Mary Hayller (1907)*

On July 1^st 1885, at the age of twenty-two, she married Henry Wells in St Marys, Wallingford and this change of status coincided with her giving up painting and taking on the accepted role of supportive wife, keeper of the home and bringing up the children. The couple had six children, two sons, Henry and Guy and four daughters, Dora, Muriel, Beatrice and Joyce. All of the children at one time or another modelled for their aunts’ paintings.

*Helping Gardener by Mary Hayllar (1884)*

Alexandra Mary Hayllar died in 1950, aged 87.

Edith Parvin Hayllar

Edith Hayllar was the fourth child and second daughter of the British artist James Hayllar born in 1860. As was the case for most English middle- and upper-class young ladies in Victorian times, art was an essential accomplishment and Edith, like her four sisters, adhered to the Victorian system of four to ten art classes a day by their father and this was to guarantee a proficiency in the basic art techniques such as proportion and perspective. They would also be given instruction in modelling, etching, mezzotint, and engraving among other media.

Once their art lessons were completed, she and her sisters spend the rest of their time at home relaxing, partaking in outdoor sports such as tennis, plein air painting, and even some gardening. This relaxed lifestyle featured in the depiction seen in all the sisters’ paintings

Of the five sisters, Jessica Hayllar and Edith Hayllar where the most well-known painters, and like their father, James, they specialised in genre painting. It is thought that through the depictions in Edith’s paintings of women in domestic interiors with their families gave an insight into their lifestyle. The women in her genre works were observed running a well-organized households and clearly defined a woman’s role at any given time in their lives. Edith had not taken on the role as a spokesperson for female independence and was content with the term “female dependency”

Edith works of art were shown almost every year from the 1880s–1890s at the Institute for Oil Painters and Dudley’s Gallery. In 1881 she had her first piece exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists in London and then a year later, in 1882, another of her works was exhibited in the Royal Academy of Arts.

Maybe her best-known and best loved painting was her 1883 work entitled A Summer Shower, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition. It depicts a young man with a badminton racket courting a woman who is reclining in a chair next to him. Through the window in the background, we can see the inclement weather has put a stop to all outdoor sporting activities. One critic described the work as one of the most charming genre scenes of the nineteenth century.

In 1900, at the age of forty, Edith married Rev. Bruce MacKay and the couple moved to Sutton Courteney. Marriage also signalled the end of her painting career as she devoted her life to looking after the family household. Edith died in 1948, aged 88.

(Beatrice) Kate Hayllar

(Beatrice) Kate Hayllar was born on September 1st 1864 at 15 Mecklenburgh Square, London. She was the seventh child of James and Ellen Hayllar and the youngest of their five daughters. She, like her other sisters, loved to paint and were tutored by their father. Most of her ideas for her work derived from the happy life she experienced when the family lived at Castle Priory, a large Thames-side house, close to the small town of Wallingford, Oxfordshire. The family resided there from 1875 and 1899. The beautiful interior of Castle Priory, its domestic events held there, the extensive well-laid out gardens, and the nearby countryside inspired the sisters to paint and the flowers they grew became their favourite subjects. Kate Hayllar focused her work on small and intensely observed flower and still life subjects, many of which she exhibited at the Royal Academy and Royal Society of British Artists.

*Souvenirs of Japan by Kate Hayllar (1883)*

When her mother died in 1899 she gave up painting and became a nurse. She moved to Bournemouth with her father and sister Jessica. Later she went to live with her sister Mary at Wallingford, Berkshire.

Eugenie Grace Hayllar

Eugenie Grace Hayllar was born in St Etienne, Ardèche, Rhône-Alpes, France on August 26th 1861. She was the fifth child of James Hayllar and Ellen Phoebe Cavell. Eugenie Grace Hayllar married Robert Fletcher Leslie and the couple had two children, Harry and Charles, born in 1891 and 1893 respectively. Eugenie passed away on March 2nd 1943 in Wallingford, Berkshire, England. Her husband had died the year before.

I was unable to find any paintings attributed to her but we know that like her sisters she was taught to paint by her father.

Lois Mailou Jones

Lois Mailou Jones was born in Boston, Massachusetts on November 3^rd 1905. Her mother Carolyn ran a beauty parlour and made and designed hats. Her father, Thomas Vreeland Jones was a superintendent of a large office building, who attended night school to become a lawyer. At the age of forty he graduated from Suffolk Law School, the first African-American to earn such a degree from that school. He went on to become a lawyer. Whilst still a child her parents moved to a house on Martha’s Vineyard and it was here that Lois first came into contact with people who were to influence her future life.

As a child, Lois enjoyed drawing and painting and her parents encouraged her. She was given her first set of watercolours at the age of seven. She enjoyed her time at school and recalled:

“…The schools were not segregated and I had the good fortune to have my teachers interested in my talent and I received much encouragement,” she said. “My happiness was to go to Martha’s Vineyard as soon as school was out. It was a great joy to live with nature. Environment is so important to any artist…”

1937 or '38. (Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) — *Lois Mailou Jones (c.1938)*

She attended the local primary school and in 1919 she was enrolled at the High School of Practical Arts in Boston. During her four years of studies there, she also attended evening classes at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts thanks to an annual scholarship she was awarded. She developed an interest in fashion and costume design and became an apprentice with Grace Ripley, an academic and costume designer. Lois Jones worked with Ripley after school and on Saturdays, where she would become familiar with exotic costumes and African masks which would later feature in her artwork. Her interest in African masks also led her to creating costume designs for the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, the first dance academy in the United States to produce a professional dance company.

Loïs Mailou Jones "Negro Student," 1934, charcoal on paper (Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) — *Negro Student by Loïs Mailou Jones (1934)*

Lois was only seventeen years old when she held her first solo exhibition in Martha’s Vineyard. Jones began experimenting with African mask influences during her time at the Ripley Studio. In 1923, at the age of eighteen, Lois attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where she studied, not art, but design. She was an outstanding student and she won the Susan Minot Lane Scholarship in Design. Whilst studying for her degree she also took evening classes at the Boston Normal Art School, a public college of visual and applied art in Boston.

Beneath a soft blue sky, a picturesque village nestles in a valley between a river in the extreme foreground and verdant mountains. Combining loose and discrete brushstrokes with a palette of greens and golds, the painting recalls Paul Cézanne’s late 19th-century landscapes. — *Arreau, Hautes-Pyrénées by Lois Mailou Jones (1949)*

Lois Jones began to search for something which would bring her recognition as an artist. Whilst searching she discovered the Harmon Foundation of New York, which had been established in 1921 by wealthy real-estate developer and philanthropist William E. Harmon. It was the first major foundation supporting African American creativity and ingenuity and held national competitions for black artists. Lois exhibited several of her works at these exhibitions and received several awards. It was through this foundation that she became interested in black America’s 20th century movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. During the summers of the 1920’s and 1930’s, Lois Jones spent much of her time in Harlem and this had the most reflective influence on her early development as an artist. During these visits, Jones was engrossed in the art and theories of the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theatre, politics. At the time, it was known as the “New Negro Movement”.

Loïs Mailou Jones "My Mother's Hats," 1943, oil on canvas. (Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) — *My Mother’s Hats by Loïs Mailou Jones (1943)*

Throughout the early part of her life she continued to take the opportunity to study. In 1934, she attended classes at Columbia University where she studied different cultural masks and in 1945, she received a BA in art education from Howard University, a private, research university, graduating magna cum laude. Not long after Lois left college, she decided to take up the role as an educator. She applied for a teaching post at the Boston Museum School but the director rebuffed her application saying that she should apply for a job in the South where “her people” lived. This racially prejudiced opinion from a person of such stature must have shocked her. Not to be put off by such bigotry she continued to look for work and finally was accepted for a teaching post at Palmer Memorial Institute, a historically black prep school, in Sedalia, North Carolina. The Institute was founded by nineteen-year-old Charlotte Hawkins Brown, an African American educator in 1902 with the aim of teaching elementary and high school students in rural North Carolina. It was named after Brown’s benefactor and friend, Alice Freedman Palmer, and originally the Institute began in an old blacksmith shed. Whilst working as a prep schoolteacher, she taught the children folk dancing, piano playing and even coached a basketball team.

Loïs Mailou Jones "Jeanne, Martiniquaise," 1938, oil on canvas (Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts) — *Jeanne, Martiniquaise, by Loïs Mailou Jones (1938)*

In 1930, Lois was offered and accepted a position at Howard University in Washington, D.C. by James Herring, who had founded the Art Department at Howard University and served as mentor to many artists and art historians. Lois Jones remained there, as professor of design and watercolour painting, until her retirement in 1977. Lois’ main ambition whilst at Howard University was to ensure her students were made ready for a competitive career in the arts and to aid this ambition she would arrange for established artists and designers to visit her classes and give talks, demonstrations and workshops. In doing this she became an ardent advocate for African-American art and artists.

See the source image — *The Ascent of Ethiopia.by Lois Mailou Jones (1932)*

In 1932 Lois Mailou Jones created a painting entitled The Ascent of Ethiopia. The painting is the pictorial story of the grim and challenging journey of African Americans who, through years of sacrifice and intolerable difficulties, have managed to create a legacy built on their trials and tribulations. It has been a constant fight for African Americans from the time they lived in Africa, the sea voyage to America and once there, how they have had to fight to attain their artistic and intellectual pinnacle. Lois Jones painting depicts this story by her use of certain elements of design and colour, and space. The works she created throughout her life tell the story of many different cultures. In this painting she chooses to represent her own culture. This work of art was Jones’ way of expressing intense and reflective respect for her race. When we study the painting the first thing our eyes focus on is the figure wearing a blue and black headdress in the right foreground. It takes up a quarter of the canvas. The figure looks to the left as it observes the other figures, who are carrying pots on their heads, and pointing skywards at a bright star. They are all ascending towards a city, comprised of two large buildings, at the top right of the painting.

In front of the buildings are two entertainers, one of whom is playing the piano whilst the other I think is preparing to sing as we see musical notes all around him. Behind these two big buildings there’s a big round yellow circular object protruding from the side, surrounded by two blue/turquoise concentric circles. It has a face, and someone on a bended knee appearing to be acting on top of it. The turquoise-coloured circle is bigger than the previous one and has a face coming out towards the inside. Further up there’s someone painting on top of the blue circle with the words art above enclosed within the blue circle. A symbolic palette and brush are painted within that same blue circle, the star in the top left corner has rays of squiggly blue, green, and black streaks that radiate diagonally. The star is inside of a yellow circle shining down on the people gesturing towards it, this picture reflects what Jones was trying to convey to her audience. The painting is a tale of transition, a long and tortuous voyage from the poverty of Ethiopia to America where African Americans, through hard work and dogged determination, became talented actors, artists and entertainers. It is also about cultural identity.

Loïs Mailou Jones "Seventh Street Promenade," 1943, watercolor with graphite underdrawing on paper (Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) — *Seventh Street Promenade, by Loïs Mailou Jones (1943)*

In 1937, Jones was awarded a fellowship to travel and study in Paris at the Académie Julian. That year, whilst in France, she produced more than forty works of art, including thirty watercolours, may of which were plein air renditions. Two of her paintings were accepted at the annual Salon de Printemps exhibition at the Société des Artists Français for her Parisian debut. What also pleased Lois during her twelve months stay was that unlike in America, she was fully accepted in society and that the colour of her skin mattered little. She managed to obtain an extension to her fellowship which allowed her to travel to Italy.

*Les Fétiches, by Lois Mailou Jones (1938)*

In 1938, she completed one of her best-known pieces, entitled Les Fétiches. It was and African inspired painting that now hangs in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Painted in a Modernist style it features five overlapping masks from different African tribes and conveys a mysterious spiritual dimension summoned by ritual dance. To the right of the main mask, we see what is known as a red religious’ fetish. The term “fetish” (fétiche in French) refers to an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a human-made object that has power over others. The masks and fetish appear to float in the mass of a black painted canvas. When in France, Lois would probably have seen many different African objects and masks at the Musée de l’Homme, an anthropology museum in Paris. In Les Fétiches, the Songye people’s masks and African Dan masks are visible.

In 1941, Lois Jones entered her painting Indian Shops Gay Head, Massachusetts, into the Corcoran Gallery’s annual competition which she had completed the previous year. For her the main problem with exhibiting her work at this prestigious exhibition was that the Corcoran Gallery prohibited African-American artists from entering their artworks themselves and only work from “white” artists was deemed acceptable. Jones asked Céline Marie Tabary, her friend and arts professor at Howard University who championed African-American art in 1940s Washington, D.C. to enter her painting so as to side-step the racist rule. This painting by Lois won the Robert Woods Bliss Award but she could not collect the award herself and she had to arrange for Tabary to mail the award to her. In 1994, the Corcoran Gallery of Art gave a public apology to Jones at the opening of the exhibition The World of Lois Mailou Jones, 50 years after Jones hid her identity.

In 1944 Lois Jones painted one of her most controversial and thought-provoking works. A philosophy professor at Howard University and founder of the Harlem Renaissance, Alain Locke, encouraged her to depict her heritage in her paintings and this led to her painting, Mob Victim (Meditation). She remembered how the painting came into being, saying that she had been walking along U Street Northwest in Washington, DC. when she saw a man walking along and she stopped him and asked if he would pose in her studio for her painting which would depict a lynching scene. The man told Lois that he had actually witnessed a lynching and mimicked the pose that the man held before being lynched and visually illustrated a contemplation of imminent death which was well understood by blacks during the 1940s. The image we see of the man whips up deep and powerful feelings as we observe the innocence of the black man who is calling into question the intolerable actions of society. Look at the questioning expression in the man’s eyes. It is a very emotional work which poses the simple question, why?

In 1953, at the age of forty seven, Lois finally married Haitian graphic artist Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noel.. They had been close friends for twenty years and he had influenced Lois by introducing her to the bright colours and bold patterns of Haitian art and she would immerse herself in the Haitian culture during their annual trips to her husband’s homeland. Jones’s style shifted again after she married She once said that the art of Africa is lived in the daily life of the people of Haiti.

Colorful painting by Lois Mailou Jones featuring a young African girl in face paint, with depictions of masks and decoration in the background — *Ubi Girl from Tai region by Lois Mailou Jones (1972)*

In 1970 she visited Africa for the first time. She journeyed to eleven different countries on the African continent. The trip had been made possible with a grant from Howard University to keep a record of the various artists she met. She returned to the African continent in 1972, 1976 and 1977. In the painting a young woman looks out at us from under her partially closed eyelids. The girl’s face is surrounded by two types of masks: in profile, is a large Dan mask from Liberia or Côte d’Ivoire, and drawn within orange outlines are two Pende masks from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Masks were thought to be powerful ways of communicating with spirits; the Dan mask represents a specifically female spirit, and the blue and red twisting lines in the lower left corner are a pattern of the Edo, from Benin Kingdom, called “rope of the world” representing a person’s lifetime., The woman’s forehead and cheeks are painted white for her initiation celebration into womanhood and vivid diagonal red lines overlap at the bridge of her nose, which leaves her mouth and chin uncovered. Loïs Mailou Jones was captivated by this woman and created the portrait in 1972, entitled Ubi Girl from Tai region. The Tai region was part of Côte d’Ivoire, which Lois visited during her extended trip to Africa. The artist had a long-held dream of traveling to Africa since her twenties, and at the age of 65, she fulfilled her career-long ambition.

Jones continued to produce beautiful works of art. On her 84th birthday in November 1989, Jones had a major heart attack which necessitated a triple bypass operation. On June 9^th 1998, Jones died at the age of 92 at her home in Washington, DC and is buried on Martha’s Vineyard in the Oak Bluffs Cemetery.

Clara Peeters – The Queen of Still Life paintings

I suppose painters challenge us with trompe l’oeil aspect of their depictions partly as a joke, as in the case of M C Escher and partly as an outward show of their technical brilliance. Trompe l’oeil (trick of the eye) is often incorporated in still life paintings and in many facets of a still life work we can appreciate the expertise of the artist. The words still life derive from a Dutch word stilleven while the French prefer nature morte and Italian, natura morta meaning dead nature. Still life paintings are those which depict inanimate objects, whether they be such things as musical instruments, kitchen utensils and tableware as well as portrayal of dead animals, foliage or musical instruments etc. Often the inclusion of an inanimate object in a painting has a symbolic meaning whilst at other times it is simply art for art’s sake.

What Is Vanitas — *Vanitas* Still Life with a Skull and a Quill (1628) by Pieter Claesz

The term memento mori, a Latin phrase meaning ‘remember you must die’ is often a term used when describing certain types of still life works. Paintings, for example, which may include a portrait with a skull but other symbols commonly found are hour glasses or clocks, extinguished or guttering candles, fruit, and flowers. Closely related to the memento mori picture is the vanitas still life. I find the depiction of these inanimate objects fascinating and feel that they are completed by the most talented artists.

*Basket of Flowers by Balthasar van der Ast (1622)*

Unlike me, the French Academy of the seventeenth century did not agree. According to the French Academy their hierarchy of genres (or subject types) for art established in the seventeenth century, still life paintings were ranked at the bottom – fifth after history painting, portraiture, genre painting (scenes of everyday life) and landscape. It is thought that still life and landscape paintings were considered lowly because they did not involve human subject matter.

Still Life with Jug, Berkemeyer and Smoking Utensils_Pieter Claesz_17th century — *Still Life with Jug, Berkemeyer and Smoking Utensils by Pieter Claesz* *(1640)*

We know people buy portraiture to remember someone. People buy landscapes and seascapes for their beauty and often to remind themselves of places they loved to visit. Genre paintings were scenes of everyday life which often were also pictorial tales of morals and sometimes the realist genre paintings told of harsh times suffered by the less fortunate. But who would buy still life paintings? I suppose a beautiful flower arrangement depicted in a floral still life lights up a room but what about still life paintings which depict dead animals, food and expensive homeware? Buyers of such work may believe that the painting reflects their affluence or hunting prowess.

*The spoils of the chase guarded by a dog by Jan Fyt (c.1630)*

When you look through the list of sixteenth and seventeenth still life painters, very few women’s names appear and yet there are a few. The most obvious are the seventeenth century artists, Rachel Rausch with her floral still life works and Judith Leyster. Today I want to look at the life and works of the greatest female still life painters, Clara Peeters. She was by far the best-known female Flemish artist of this era and one of the few women artists who became a professional artist in seventeenth-century Europe, and she achieved that status despite constraints on women’s access to artistic training and membership in guilds.

Clara Peeters was born in Antwerp but when it comes to her date of birth there is some confusion. It is known that a Clara Peeters, the daughter of Jean (Jan) Peeters was baptized on May 15^th 1594 in the Church of St. Walburga, Antwerp and other records indicate that Clara Peeters and Henric Joosen were married in the same church on May 31^st 1639. So is that Clara Peeters the famous artist? Although she is a major figure in the history of European still life painting, almost nothing is known about Clara Peeters’s life with certainty. Early researchers confused her with other women bearing the same relatively common name, ranging from an Antwerp heiress to an Amsterdam prostitute. Also, we have to be wary of jumping to conclusions as Peeters was a very common name in Antwerp.

Another factor which casts doubt on the birthdate of 1594 as her paintings, which were dated 1607, would mean she completed them she was just thirteen years of age and that is extremely unlikely so the conclusion is Clara was born in the 1580’s.

*Still Life with Fish, a Candle, Artichokes, Crab, and Prawns by Clara Peeters (1611)*

At a point in time when she was living in Amsterdam Clara Peeters produced one of her still life masterpieces in 1911. It was entitled Still Life with Fish, a Candle, Artichokes, Crab, and Prawns. Before us we see what looks like a wooden table upon which is a selection of seafood, such as boiled crabs and shrimp, several freshwater fish including two carp, a roach, several ide or orfe, and a northern pike. Behind the food there is a dark glass goblet, a brass candlestick with an unlit but partially burnt out candle, a Rhenish stoneware jug, a copper strainer with a brass colander in which are two artichokes.

Although you will not see it in the main picture if you were able to take a close look at the lid of the jug you would see a reflection/self portrait of Clara wearing a large headpiece. She, like a number of famous artists, included her own portrait in a number of her paintings.

Still Life with Sparrow Hawk, Fowl, Porcelain and Shells, zoomed in — *Still life with Sparrow Hawk, Fowl, Porcelain and Shells by Clara Peeters (1611)*

Another painting in the Prado collection by Clara Peeters is her 1611 work entitled Still Life with a Sparrow Hawk, Fowl, Porcelain and Shells and is thought to have been in the Spanish royal collection. In this work we see a life-sized Eurasian sparrow hawk balanced on the edge of a wicker basket. Due to its large size we believe it to be the female of the species. Sparrow hawks would typically be used in the gardens surrounding a palace or a city, and not only by men but also by women and children learning the art of falconry. Lying lifeless in the basket is a large mallard, and a woodcock. At the left, with its head hanging from the table is a hen. A dead thrush lies on the table. The small red bird to the right is a common bullfinch. The bullfinch often appeared in Clara’s still life paintings and this could well be because of its vivid red colouring and in this work contrasts well with the green head of the mallard. Along the side of the wicker basket are a line of dead finches, hanging by their necks. One question you might ask yourself is why have one live bird depicted among so many dead ones. I think the reason is that the smaller dead birds could well be the prey of the living sparrow hawk. Again in this painting, as it was in the previous one, note how Clara has contrasted the soft feathered bodies of the birds with the harder and finer surfaces of the shells and porcelain dishes.

The several plates and bowls of white kraak porcelain are stacked on top of a blue and white kraak plate, an item which appeared in a number of Peeters’ paintings. In this painting the blue colour of this dish has faded and this is probably due to the cobalt-based pigment used. Kraak ware or Kraak porcelain is a type of Chinese export porcelain produced mainly in the late Ming Dynasty, in the Wanli reign. It was among the first Chinese export wares to arrive in Europe from the late sixteenth century via Portugal and Spain, and spread throughout the continent mainly through Habsburg networks. It often featured in Dutch Golden Age paintings of still life subjects which included foreign luxuries.

Image result for still life with flowers, gilt goblet, almonds, dried fruits, sweets, biscuits, wine and a pewter flagon — *Still life with flowers, a Silver Gilt Goblet, Dried Fruits, Sweetmeats, Bread Sticks, wine and a Pewter Flagon by Clara Peeters (1611)*

For the less squeamish but keeping to the subject of food I give you Clara Peeters’ 1621 painting entitled Table with Cloth, Salt Cellar, Gilt Standing Cup, Pie, Jug, Porcelain Plate with Olives and Cooked Fowl. There are no dead animals on this table, just simple and tasty fare. The arrangement of inanimate objects would appear random when in fact Peeters probably spent much time with the arrangement. Firstly, she would want what was placed on the table to look like an everyday table set for a feast. However, she would ensure that none of the objects blocked the view of another. The glass in the background containing the red wine is a fluted façon de Venise glass and was the type that was being manufactured in Antwerp by Italian glassblowers at the time. It is probable that the red wine had been imported from France, Italy or Spain. At the time of the painting much of food in the Dutch capital, such as wine, oil, salt, raisins and figs had come from Spain. In this painting we see these fruits, together with almonds and sugar candy, in a large wide bowl known as a bianchi di Faenza vessel, a type of earthenware made in Faenza, an Italian city in the province of Ravenna, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries..

Look carefully at the gilt goblet and the pewter flagon. These are objects that appear in other of her still life paintings and also once again, she painted her self-portrait – three times in the raised parts of the goblet and four times in a vertical line on the pewter jug. This inclusion of herself portraits in some of her works is believed to be a form of a proclamation that she was a female painter and proud to be one in a profession dominated by men.

The Still Life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels which she completed in 1615 is one of Clara Peeters’ best works and is part of the Mauritshuis collection. The depiction features a stone table top on which is a tin plate with three cheeses on it. Above the cheeses is a smaller plate of butter shavings. In the foreground, on the left there are two pretzels, next to which is a knife with a beautifully decorated silver handle, three almonds and a blue-white plate of Wan Li porcelain filled with dried figs, almonds and raisins. In the background we see a stoneware jar and a partially gilded lidded glass à la façon de Venise. On the right side of the table there is also a sandwich and two raisins. It is a meticulous depiction even down to small damages to some of the items and the hole in the cheese where a testing tube had been inserted. As with all her still life works she has a remarkable ability to depict textures. Look how she has depicted the crumbly nature of the dark green cheese and the softness of the shavings of butter as well as the reflective quality of the wine glass. Her colour palette consists mainly of delicately harmonised yellow and reddish-brown shades and by doing this she has added warmth to the depiction but it is contrasted by the cool blue and white bowl at the right foreground. The dark background and the way she has placed the objects in close proximity to each other offers a scene of intimacy.

Look at the knife in the foreground that overhangs the edge of the table. The blade has an Antwerp mark, but more of interest is the ornate handle, which is decorated with ornaments and figures that signify love and marriage. Although not clear in the picture, at the top a vignette of entangled hands with a burning heart and below it the allegorical figures of Faith and Temperance. This type of knife, along with a matching fork in a pouch, was given as a wedding cutlery as a gift at weddings. Even more interesting is the side of this bridal knife, on which Clara has put her name in the form of an engraved inscription, which is unusual as it is one of the few still lifes that she has signed her name in full, rather than her usual signature on her paintings “CLARA P”. Maybe the reason for the full name on the knife handle was because it was her own wedding gift. However, whether she ever married is still unknown.

Once again we see the added personal touch to this still life work for if you take a closer look you can uncover in the metal lid of the stone jug the reflection of a face with a white cap: this is Clara herself and as in other paintings by her this reflection appears to be a secondary “signature”. This incorporation of a self portrait in a painting soon caught on and many other artists followed suit.

Florero (2) — *Vase of Flowers by Jan Brueghel the Elder (Jan Velvet Brueghel), 1609*

Paintings depicting vases of flowers were very popular at the time. One of the leading exponents was Jan Breughel the Elder.

Bouquet of Flowers by Clara Peeters (c.1612)

One of Clara Peeters’ floral still life paintings is in the Met Museum of New York. The painting depicts a luxurious bouquet of flowers in a roemer glass, which stands on a low stone shelf. The painting is awash with primary colours which make it stand out against a plain dark background. The bunch is a mix of late spring and early summer blooms and include roses, tulips, narcissi, carnations, and irises. We see that some of the flowers have shed their petals which now lie on the pitted ledge. Clara Peeters was an expert when it came to depicting reflective surfaces, an example of this is her depiction of the glass with its ornamented base and serrated foot. We see a butterfly perched on the stem of a fallen flower and in a way, this brings to life this still life work.

One has to presume that Clara Peeters’ choice of still life paintings is a result of the restrictions imposed on female artists. Female artists rarely followed an art education, certainly never being allowed to paint naked models, a must-do requirement if you wanted to become a history painter. On the other hand, everyday objects were within reach of female painters. Peeters’ still life artwork was in great demand with the buying public. Already in the first half of the 17th century there was work by her in collections in the Northern Netherlands as well as her still lifes in the royal collection in Madrid. As was explained at the beginning of this blog the date of her birth is not precisely known. It is the same for the date of her passing but it is presumed to be sometime after 1657.

Mary Blood Mellen and Fitz Henry Lane – Pupil and Master.

Mary Taylor Blood was born on May 13th, 1819. Her father was Reuben Blood, Jr. and her mother was Sally Taylor Blood and they lived in Sterling Massachusetts. Mary had two older brothers but was the eldest of four sisters. When she was still only a child, she was enrolled in Miss Thayer’s school, where she learned to paint with watercolours. Having shone as a potential artist she later moved to the Quaker’s Fryville Seminary in Bolton, Massachusetts. This school was established in 1823 by Thomas Fry, a local Quaker, as a co-educational preparatory school. It was here that she improved her skill as an artist and developed her early talent for sketching and painting.

*Taking in the Sail by Mary Blood Mellen*

Whilst still a teenager, the family moved to Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire and as fate would have it a young Universalist minister, Reverend Charles W. Mellen, arrived to act as pastor in the neighbouring towns. Reverend Mellen came from a family of farmers from nearby Phillipston and soon after, he and Mary met and the couple fell in love. In 1840 Mary and the Reverend Charles Mellen, married and went to live in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Mary and her husband relocated many times due to his pastoral work and in 1846 while living in the Massachusetts town of Foxborough, Mary gave birth to a daughter, Amanda. Sadly the baby only survived for forty-eight hours and the gravestone they erected at the site of the grave had the poignant inscription:

“…Our short-lived flower returned unto God…”

Even sadder was the fact that the couple never had any other children. Mary was fortunate that she had the support of her husband during these sad times and he was also very supportive with regards Mary’s artistic work.

*Field Beach, Stage Fort Park* by Mary Blood Mellen (c.1850)

Mary’s brother-in-law, William Grenville Roland Mellen, was also a Universalist minister and in the late 1840’s had his ministry in Cambridge Massachusetts and Mary and her husband made a number of visits to visit him in the city. Cambridge was a metropolitan suburb of Boston and at the time Boston was considered to be the New England’s centre of culture. In the city there was the Boston Athenaeum which is one of the oldest independent libraries in the United States. In the years 1872–1876, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts exhibited in the Athenaeum’s gallery space while waiting for construction of its own building to be completed and at that time it boasted the largest art collection in New England. One can be sure that Mary Mellen, whilst visiting her brother-in-law and his family, found time to visit the building and discover the artistic treasures it held. Some of the works on display which Mary would have seen were by the American painter and printmaker, Fitz Henry Lane.

Fitz Henry Lane was born in the fishing port of Gloucester, Massachusetts on December 18th,1804. He was actually born Nathaniel Rogers Lane but in 1831, when he was twenty-seven, he legally changed his first and middle names, becoming known as Fitz Henry Lane. He suffered various illnesses as a young child. The most severe was paralysis due to infantile polio and after this illness he had to use crutches. Lane learned the basic art techniques while in his teens and in 1832 he started work with a firm of lithographers in Gloucester. Later in 1832, he moved to Boston for formal training and enrolled as an apprentice with William S. Pendleton, who owned one of the city’s most important lithographic firm. Lane stayed working for Pendleton until 1837, during which time he produced many illustrations for sheet music and scenic views.

*Salem Harbour by Fitz Henry Lane (1853)*

Whilst living in in Boston, Lane became aware of the artistic works of the English-born artist Robert Salmon, who was looked upon as the most accomplished marine painter in the area. Works of art by Salmon with their precisely detailed ships and sharply rendered effects of light and atmosphere had a pivotal influence on Lane’s early style. By 1840, Lane had produced his first oil paintings and soon he was listed in a Boston almanac as a “Marine Painter.” His works were first exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum in 1841 and, after 1845, his works were regularly shown there.

*Clipper Ship Sweepstakes by Fitz Henry Lane (1853)*

One of his very fine ship portrait is his 1853 painting entitled Clipper Ship Sweepstakes. The work is thought to be a pendant piece of his 1854 work entitled The “Golden State” Entering New York Harbor, The Golden State was another clipper ship owned by Chambers and Heiser who probably commissioned both works.

*The Golden State entering New York Harbor by Fitz Henry Lane (1853)*

This large work, The Golden State entering New York Harbor, was some four feet wide, and is considered one of Lane’s masterpieces. The location in the depiction is not known, but it could well be the broad bay at the mouth of New York harbour. It is a blustery day with scudding clouds and a frothy chop in the very green water. The ship is flying a blue-and-white swallowtail pennant with a red tail—the house flag of Chambers and Heiser—on its foremast. An American flag flies off its stern.

*View of Coffin’s Beach by Fitz Henry Lane (1862)*

However, although there is no evidence that Mary Blood Mellon was formally apprenticed to Fitz Henry Lane, his early years spent working in various lithography workshops would have impressed upon him the value of having an apprentice and the connection became an asset to both the master and the student. By the mid-1850s, it seems that Mary Mellen was working alongside Lane in his Gloucester studio, and the “coupling” was working well as it appears that Lane had given Mary free access to his drawings and on some occasions allowed her to make copies from his canvases. Her copies were so good and her stylistic faithfulness increased, such that, at a later time, even Lane himself appeared uncertain as to which was his when both were shown side by side.

*Owl’s Head, Penobscot, Maine* by Fitz Henry Lane in 1862

A classic example of the this can be seen when you look at both their renditions of a scene entitled Owl’s Head, a coastal town in Knox County, Maine. Fitz Lane completed his painting (2) Owl’s Head, Penobscot, Maine in 1862. Lane painted Owl’s Head, (1), named for its distinctive profile, from the east, with the Camden Hills beyond. The land formations delicately mirrored in still water, the clear sky, and the pale, salmon colours of early morning emphasize the atmosphere rather than the topography of the site. On the back of the painting, an inscription in Lane’s handwriting establishes it as his own work: Owl’s Head–Penobscot Bay, by F.H. Lane, 1862.

The curators and conservators of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston compared paint application and the use of colour in the paintings by Mellen (1) and Lang (2). In general, they stated that Lane’s brushstrokes seem crisper, and he more precisely defines compositional elements such as the pine trees. They also concluded that Lane’s palette is also cooler than Mellen’s. Yet on careful examination, they agreed that these details can sometimes be too close to definitively separate the authorship and it could be entirely possible that, in studio tradition, Lane contributed to Mellen’s paintings, even if she signed them, and this complicates the issues of attribution even further.

Mary Mellen was said to have copied Lane’s style so that even he could not tell which was his own painting. In his 2006 book, Fitz H. Lane: An Artist’s Voyage through Nineteenth-Century America (2006), the author James A Craig wrote:

“…Mrs. Mellen is so faithful in the copies of her master that even an expert might take them for originals. Indeed, an anecdote is related of her, which will exemplify her power in this direction. She had just completed a copy of one of Mr. Lane’s pictures when he called at her residence to see it. The copy and the original were brought down from the studio together and the master, much to the amusement of those present, was unable to tell which was his own, and which was the pupil’s…”

This copying was not unusual in an artist-apprentice relationship. What confuses some art historians as to the attribution of a painting as it appears as though Mellen had a hand in completing parts of several Lane paintings, or may have even sketched certain landscape views that would have been difficult for Lane to access, given his lameness

*Coast of Maine by Fitz Henry Lane and Mary Mellen (c.1850)*

There is only one known work signed by both Lane and Mellen, and this is their 1850’s work entitled Coast of Maine. Both Mellen and Lane signed the back of the canvas of the small tondo.

*Blood Family Homestead (ca. 1859) by Mary Blood Mellen*

In August 1859 Mary Mellen and Fitz Henry Lane travelled together to to visit the Blood family residence in Sterling, Massachusetts, where they both created paintings of the Blood homestead with the two paintings depicting a different season.

FITZ HENRY LANE (Massachusetts, 1804-1865), "The Blood Family Homestead"., Oil on canvas, 18" x 30". Framed 22" x 35". — *The Blood Family Homestead by Fitz Henry Lane*

It is thought that by 1861 the Mary Mellen and her husband were living in Dorchester, Massachusetts, which was only a short distance from Gloucester. Three years later, the couple moved again, this time to Taunton, Massachusetts, which was about forty miles south of Boston.

Mary Mellen suffered duel losses in the mid 1860’s. Fitz Henry Lane had been unwell throughout 1864 and 1865 and this culminated in a bad fall in August 1865, followed by a heart attack. He died in his home on Duncan’s Point on August 14th, 1865 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery. One of Boston’s newspapers described his death as “a national loss,” however Lane’s reputation during his lifetime was mainly local and after his death he and his works were largely forgotten outside Gloucester. A year later Mary’s husband, Reverend Charles W. Mellen, died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of forty-eight. Following Lane’s death in 1865 and Charles Mellen’s death in 1866, Mary Mellen, now widowed and childless, moved to Connecticut to live with her widowed sister-in-law, Sophronia Haskell.

Mary Mellen carried on painting until her death on February 11^th,1886, when she died of typhoid at the age of sixty-six in Sterling, Massachusetts. Her passing was noted in several newspapers with obituaries acclaiming her as “a woman of great acquirements and an artist of prominence. Her specialty was marine work and her pictures were very popular.” Her will, which she had made in 1882 stipulated to which niece and nephew each of her original paintings by Fitz Lane should go. She also insisted that Lane’s nephew Fitz Henry Winter should receive a painting by Fitz Lane, as well as a portrait of him that was in her collection. In recent years, art historians recognize Mary Blood Mellen as one of the most accomplished artists to work on Cape Ann in the years immediately preceding the Civil War.

Anna Massey Lea Merritt

Sometimes when I am searching for a new artist to write about, I come across a painting which just sticks in the mind and I know I have to learn more about the painter who has delivered such a beautiful depiction. This blog is a prime example of this modus operandi.

*Right Reverend Talbot by Anna Lea Merritt (1899)*

Today I am looking at the life and times of the American painter, Anna Massey Lea Merritt who spent most of her life painting whilst living in Britain. Anna Massey Lea was born on September 13^th 1844 in the city of Philadelphia. She counted among her ancestors Andrew Robeson, the first Chief Justice of Pennsylvania back in 1693. Anna was brought up in a wealthy Quaker environment and was the eldest of six children of Joseph Lea and Susanna Massey. Her affluent upbringing allowed her to attend politically progressive schools where she studied classics, languages, mathematics, and music with private tutors. As far as her artistic upbringing was concerned, she began to study drawing with the portrait painter, William Henry Furness, at the age of seven. Admission to the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts was probably not possible for her but later she studied anatomy at the newly founded Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia.

In 1867, when she was twenty-three, she and her family took a trip to Europe. continuing her art studies at the Louvre in Paris, in Rome, and in Dresden with the painter the German painter, Heinrich Hoffman, at the Academy of Art in Dresden. In 1870 Anna was living in Paris. She was at a boarding school living with her sister but that July the Franco-Prussian War broke out and the Prussian army was marching on the French capital. Fearing for their safety, she and her family were forced to abandon France and make their way to London. Rather than return to America with her family she persuaded her father to let her remain in London. He acquiesced and arranged for her to live with family friends. However, at their house there was no room for a studio but after searching for a suitable place she found one in the house where Henry Merritt lived. Later in her 1879 biography, Henry Merritt: Art Criticism and Romance, she wrote about the early days in the studio and her timidity towards Henry Merritt:

“…I soon heard that he was a restorer and a connoisseur, but with timidity natural in a woman living alone in a foreign country, I avoided every acquaintance which might seem to arise in an accidental manner. I shut myself into an ugly studio, with a window through which I could look neither on the earth nor into the sky, and produced ugly pictures with no truth in them…”

Once Anna had got over her initial shyness, she became quite close to Merritt and took advice from him with regards her paintings. She offered to pay him for his guidance but he refused stating his “rules”:

“… if I teach you, I must have the right to do it my own way. I must come when I like and scold you as much as I choose, and be altogether my own master if I am to be yours…”

And so he began to critique her work and was often quite blunt as Anna remembered:

“…So it was : how he scolded me ; how ruthlessly he rubbed out again and again the work of days, bidding me do it better ; what pains he took to make me appreciate true points of excellence ! When my work was dry, and had lain by awhile, he would sketch upon it in crayon, de- signing backgrounds or trying various effects of chiaroscuro. No one ever witnessed as I have done his fertility of invention, his refinement of colouring, his variety in touch. Often, he would work thus for a couple of hours, transforming my tame study of a model into a vision. The picture would go through a succession of different effects, any one of which could have satisfied a less imaginative mind. He would then throw down the chalks or the brushes, as the case might be, just give me time to study it, and wash off all he had done, bidding me make another design according to similar laws…”

Over time Anna’s relationship with Henry Merritt changed from Master and Pupil to a more intimate relationship. Around the winter of 1875 Henry’s health deteriorated and he developed a never-ending cough which he downplayed to Anna saying:

“…It would be impossible to cough so splendidly with weak lungs…..My cough is no better although I have practiced it continually…”

The cough didn’t get better, in fact, it worsened and he began to cough up blood which he tried to ignore using a coloured handkerchief to catch the phlegm and disguise any signs of blood. In the Spring of 1876 Anna was forced to leave London and travel to America as escort for her younger sister who had to return to the family. She told Henry that she did not want to leave him but it was her duty to the family but she promised to return in the Autumn.

Anna, once in America, now found herself having to pay for two studios – the one in America and the rent on her London studio and to afford this she had to find some commissions for her work. All the time Henry was writing to her telling her to concentrate on her art and look for work. The tone of his letters showed how he had become devoted to Anna. He would address his letters to:

“My dear little pupil”

In a letter from his Devonshire Street studio, dated May 8^th 1876, he tried to ease Anna’s worries that during their enforced separation he would forget her and write words to boost her self-belief. He wrote:

“…You imagine that I shall forget you. Am I likely after all the trouble I have taken to make a painter of you ? Do we plant fruit trees in order to leave them when the blossoms that are to produce peaches and apples appear ? Some day you will learn to value your many precious gifts better than to surmise that anyone possessing understanding will fail to appreciate a talented girl. Those who have hearts—there are not many—will not fail to see that Anna M. Lea is also a generous girl. I saw it long ago, or I should hardly have taken the trouble to teach her to spread colours upon canvas…”

*Portrait of Henry Merritt with a Pipe by Anna Lea Merritt (1877)*

Their separation lasted until March 1877. It was a time when Anna was grieving for two close relatives who had died and it made her more conscious with regards life and death and that Henry was still ill and living alone in London. It also coincided with having completed a number of lucrative commissions so that she was in the financial position to buy a sea passage to England.

In mid-March 1877, Anna arrived in Liverpool and travelled down to London to see Henry. A small celebratory party followed. Of the evening Anna recalled what Henry said to her. In her 1879 biography of her husband, Henry Merritt: Art Criticism and Romance, she recalled his words:

“…Little Pupil we shall be married. I cannot part from you again. I am like a ship at the end of a long voyage, after ploughing the ocean for many a year, become covered with barnacles and all sorts of queer clinging weeds. But I do not see why I should give up our happiness for the sake of ungrateful people, who only think of what money they can get from me. We can still spare something for them, but in time perhaps you will have to defend me from them. You will be happy living in a cottage, as we soon shall, when I show you what a beautiful life it can be made. You are my only true friend, we must never be separated…”

On April 17^th 1877 Anna and Henry married privately at St Pancras Church, London. She was thirty-three years old, he was fifty-five. It was a happy time for the couple. However Anna was ever conscious that her husband’s facial expression could not mask the pain he was in. On July 22^nd, Henry’s fifty-fifth birthday they drove to Hampton Court and talked about their future plans and buying a small cottage in the country. Henry’s health took a turn for the worse and Anna recalls those last days with her husband:

“…Suffering became intense, but was never more nobly borne. His constant thought was for me. He feared my fatigue, he-feared my anxiety; but it was my great comfort that he could not spare me from him. No one else could be permitted to wait upon him, and for every trifling service he was so grateful, as though he did not expect to be tenderly nursed. ‘I have borne years of loneliness,’ he said, ‘ but happiness is too much for me.”

Henry Merritt died in July 10^th 1877, shortly after his fifty-fifth birthday and he was buried in Woking and as she promised Henry, Anna had an elm tree planted above his grave. Anna had decided that she would give up painting when she married Henry but now, with him dead, her plans had to change and she survived financially by her portrait paintings and her depictions of Victorian subjects.

Now, I come to that painting I mentioned at the beginning of the blog. It is looked on as her great masterpiece. It is entitled Love Locked Out which she completed in 1889. This painting shows young Cupid, the god of desire, pressed against the door of a tomb. Anna painted it as a memorial to her husband. The thorny rose around the door frame symbolises the pain of bereavement and the persistence of love. Cupid has abandoned the world, his arrow and extinguished lamp lie on the ground with the autumn leaves. Anna described the depiction as Cupid attempting in vain to force open the door of a mausoleum, as ‘Love waiting for the door of death to open’ so that the ‘lonely pair’ might be once again reunited. In a way it symbolised her desperate effort to be with her husband in the next life. The work was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1890 and is now part of the Tate Britain collection. She was the first woman artist to have a work acquired for the Tate collection.

*The Watchers of the Straight Gate by Anna Lea Merritt (1894)*

In 1894 Anna Merritt completed another painting which depicted the two worlds – pre-death and after-death, The Watchers of the Straight Gate is Anna Merritts take on the transition between Earth and Heaven, between the living and the dead. The setting is just inside the gate to Heaven. The reddish marble columns were reminders to Anna of the columns at the National Gallery, where she sought special permission to bring her canvas so that she could paint them directly, rather than from memory. The artist has depicted two angels. One carries a scale on which to weigh the soul of who wishes to enter the kingdom of heaven. The other angel is seen holding a crown of wild roses with which to welcome accepted souls into glory. If we look between the gate we are offered a view of a verdant landscape transected by a path, which Anna described as depicting the ‘steep road descending to our village’ of Hurstbourne Tarrant in Dorset, where she was living at the time.

In 1890 Anna Merritt moved out of London and settled permanently in the Hampshire village of Hurstbourne Tarrant. It was her love of the rural village that made her put pen to paper years later and produce her 1902 book, A Hamlet in Old Hampshire.

*Eve Overcome by Remorse by Anna Lea Merritt (1887)*

In 1893 she received medals for two works at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, a mural in the Woman’s Building and the painting Eve Overcome by Remorse which she had finished six years earlier.

*Wall murals at St. Martin’s Church in Surrey by Anna Lea Merritt (1893/4)*

She then accepted the commission to paint murals for St. Martin’s Church in Surrey (1893-94).

Museum Art Reproductions | James Russell Lowell, 1882 by Anna Lea Merritt (1844-1930, United States) | ArtsDot.com — *Portrait of James Russell Lowell by Anna Lea Merritt (1882)*

Merritt was a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and carried out numerous portrait commissions, including her 1882 portrait of James Russell Lowell, the American Romantic poet and is now part of the Harvard University Portrait collection.

Often I have written about the obstacles put in front of aspiring female artists but strangely Anna Merritt was not convinced about this and in 1900, she wrote an amusing article in Lippincott’s Magazine entitled Letter to Artists in which she cited problems in domestic life as being the main problem for female painters. The article concluded:

“…The chief obstacle to a woman’s success is that she can never have a wife. Just reflect what a wife does for an artist: Darns the stockings; keeps his house; writes his letters; visits for his benefit; wards off intruders; is personally suggestive of beautiful pictures; always an encouraging and partial critic. It is exceedingly difficult to be an artist without this time-saving help. A husband would be quite useless…”

Anna Lea Merritt died in Hurstbourne Tarrant, Hampshire on 5 April 1930, aged 85.

Bertha Wegmann – the Danish Queen of Portraiture.

Bertha_Wegmann_by_Georg_E._Hansen_cropped

Bertha Wegmann . Photographed by Georg Emil Hansen (1891)

Bertha Wegmann was one of the first professional female Danish painters. Her work was very popular during her lifetime and she was much sought after as a portrait artist. Without doubt, she is one of the most noteworthy painters of the Danish Realism movement. Some art historians would have us believe that after the famous Danish portrait painter Peder Severin Krøyer, who died in 1909, Wegmann became the acknowledged leader of portrait painters in Denmark, among both genders. She went on to complete numerous portraits of the celebrities of her day along with many paintings of her family and friends. Although renowned for her portraiture she also painted landscapes, still life, and genre scenes.

Marie Triepcke

Portrait of Marie Triepcke. by Bertha Wegmann (1885)

In 1885 Bertha completed a portrait of Kroyer’s wife, Marie Triepcke Krøyer Alfvén, more commonly known as Marie Krøyer, also, like her husband, a talented Danish painter. The portrait was entitled Portrait of Marie Triepcke.

Portrait of an Elderly Gentleman by Bertha Wegmann

Another Skagen painter, Vigo Johansen, was thought to be the model for Wegmann’s portrait, Portrait of an Elderly Gentleman.

Portrait of a Girl by Bertha Wegmann (1880)

Bertha Wegmann, who was of German ancestry, was born in the small village of Soglio, in south-east Switzerland on December 16^th, 1846 to Eberhard Ludwig and Cathrine Wegmann. At the age of five the family moved to Denmark but sadly, five years after that move her mother died. As a child, Bertha showed an interest in drawing and her father, who was a merchant, and who was also an accomplished amateur painter, encouraged his daughter to paint. Because of schoolwork and having to help her father run the family home she had no time to enrol on an additional art course. In fact, it was not until she was nineteen years of age that she began her formal art studies.

Young Woman with a Child in the Garden by Bertha Wegmann

In 1867, aged twenty-one, funded by her father, she travelled to Munich and enrolled at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, with the intention of becoming a painter of historical subjects and whilst in Munich her tutors included Wilhelm Lindenschmit the Younger, the German history painter and the Austrian genre painter Eduard Kurzbauer. Although her artistic technique flourished rapidly, she, like many aspiring young artists, found herself discontented with the old-fashioned academic ambiance of the Munich academic establishments. It was a time of change in the art world with the arrival of the French Impressionists. In Italy, a group of Italian painters active in Tuscany in the second half of the nineteenth century had offered an alternative to the antiquated conventions taught by the Italian art academies and urged artists to carry out much of their painting en plein air so as to capture natural light, shade, and colour.

OIP

The Danish Artist Bertha Wegmann Painting a Portrait by Jeanna Bauck

It was whilst studying in Munich that Bertha Wegmann met fellow aspiring artist Jeanna Bauck. She was the daughter of a German-born composer and music critic Carl Wilhelm Bauck and a Swedish mother, Dorothea Fredrique. She was six years older than Wegmann. She had moved to Germany to study painting, first in Dresden and then in Munich. They immediately became great friends and for many years would share their home and studios in Munich and Paris. It was in their Munich studio, around 1879, that Jeanna completed a portrait of Bertha Wegmann entitled Den danska konstnären Bertha Wegmann målande ett porträtt, (The Danish Artist Bertha Wegmann Painting a Portrait). The setting was their studio and, at the side of which, was a window that allowed natural light to stream through and illuminate the room.

Malarinnan Jeanna Bauck (Jeanna Bauck, The Artist), by Bertha Wegmann 1881

Målarinnan Jeanna Bauck by Bertha Wegmann (1881)

Bertha and Jeanna went together on painting trips including many journeys to Italy. In late 1880, Bertha and Jeanna moved to Paris and again shared a studio. Bertha Wegmann painted almost twenty portraits of her friend, the best known of which is her well-known portrait entitled, Målarinnan Jeanna Bauck which she completed in their Paris studio. In the painting we see a smiling Jeanna gazing out at us. She is sitting slightly forward, book in hand, with a smile on her face. Her friend has portrayed her with great honesty and charisma. In the portrait, Bertha has managed to effectively juxtapose the impression of an uninhibited, independent type of woman with the stylishness of the middle-class woman. Besides Jeanna we see the tools of her career such as brushes, a palette and painting rags. The book held in her hand symbolises her character as an intelligent woman. If we look closely through the window in the background we can just make out the rooftops of Paris.. Jeanna Bauck returned to Munich in 1882, where she founded a painting school for female artists. Later, around the turn of the century she also taught at the Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen painting school, an influential organisation for female artists, which continuously offered drawing and painting courses in Berlin.

Bertha Wegmann - Madam Anna Seekamp, the Artist’s Sister — *Madam Anna Seekamp, the Artist’s Sister. by Bertha Wegmann (1883)*

Bertha Wegmann exhibited at several Salons and received an “honourable mention” in her first Salon in 1880 and a gold medal in 1881. She left Paris in 1882 and returned to Copenhagen, where she was already renowned for the works she had sent home and had exhibited at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. In 1883 her submission for the annual exhibition at the Charlottenborg Palace was a portrait her sister, Anna, entitled Madam Anna Seekamp, the Artist’s Sister. For this painting the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts awarded her the Thorvaldsen Medal. The award was one of the highest honours conferred in the Danish art world and Bertha was only the second woman to win this accolade. The enchanting painting depicts her sister with her knitting in hand. Her facial expression is one of sweetness, even playfulness. In this work, Bertha has shown her mastery at conveying both likeness and complex human expressions.

Wikioo.org - The Encyclopedia of Fine Arts - Painting, Artwork by Bertha Wegmann - Maternity — *Maternity by Bertha Wegmann*

After Bertha received the Thorvaldsen’s Medaille at Charlottenborg in 1883, she became the first woman to sit in the Academy’s Plenary Session. At the same time, she took part in many large official exhibitions throughout Scandinavia and Europe and at the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris and 1900 and she also represented Denmark at several world’s fairs, including the famous World Columbian in Chicago in 1893 also known as the Chicago World’s Fair. In 1895 her work appeared at the landmark Kvindernes Udstilling fra Fortid og Nutid (the Women’s Exhibition from the Past and Present) held in Copenhagen. It was an art and culture exhibition for women from the Nordic countries.

Wikioo.org - The Encyclopedia of Fine Arts - Painting, Artwork by Bertha Wegmann - Woman with a Book — *Woman with a Book by Bertha Wegmann*

In 1897 Bertha Wegmann became the first woman to hold a chair at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. From that year through to 1907, she was a member of the board for the “Tegne- og Kunstindustriskolen for Kvinder” (Drawing and Art Industrial School for Women). In 1892 she became one of the first women to receive the royal Ingenio et Arti medal. The award is given to artists (musicians, painters, actors and scientists) who have done extremely noteworthy work. It is a Danish medal awarded to prominent Danish and foreign scientists and artists.

*Portrait of a seated Woman by Bertha Wegmann*

On February 22^nd 1926, after a very long life of constant artistic success, Bertha Wegmann died suddenly, aged 78, while working in her studio. She will be remembered as someone who achieved an unparalleled career at a time when it was especially difficult for a woman to forge any kind of independent life. She was both determined and hard-working, but she also had a calm and caring nature. She was a multifaceted person who forged trails, broke stereotypes and cracked so many of the glass ceilings of her time. She must also be remembered as a popular and loyal friend to many, a loving sister and a zealous champion of other artists, especially women artists.