Anne Goldthwaite, American Art Students Club, oil on canvas, 1908, Whitney Museum of American Art [previously owned by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney], New York.

Having recently read Jennifer Dasal’s new book, The Club: Where American Women Artists Found Refuge in Belle Epoque Paris, I’d like to share some of my research on the subject. Dasal’s book provides a valuable overview of Parisian culture before World War I, the key schools, and the artists who lived and studied there. Dasal mentions only learning about the American Girls’ Club, founded in the 1890s, recently, which is not unusual given the lack of research on women artists. However, as part of writing two biographies of American women artists who lived and met at the Club at 4, rue de Chevreuse on the Left Bank, I’ve spent over three decades researching its history and significance, and some of those findings shared below complement Dasal’s recent publication. 1

I wrote extensively about one student’s experience in Ethel Pennewill Brown Leach: Delaware Artist of Time, Place, and Season, published by the Historical Society of Delaware in 1999. In this biography of Ethel Pennewill Brown [Leach] (1878-1959), I wrote about Brown’s time at the Club from late 1912 into the spring of 1913. Much of my research was conducted using Ethel Brown’s daily diaries and letters home, which offer a thorough account of her life at the Club and her time in Paris and its surroundings. The details from Brown’s diaries and letters paint a picture of what it was like for an American woman artist living abroad in Paris during this unique moment in the history of art. 2

By 1912, Ethel Brown had completed her art studies in Wilmington, Delaware, and matriculated at the Art Students League in NY, living in a studio with other women artists studying with iconic teachers such as William Merritt Chase, Kenyon Cox, and John Twachtman.  From there, she returned to Wilmington to study with Howard Pyle, the great American illustrator and teacher of such notables as N.C. Wyeth and Jessie Wilcox Smith.

While practicing illustration as a career and still unfulfilled in her dream of studying in Paris, Ethel Brown boarded the S.S. Alice, an Austrian American steamship sailing from Brooklyn on November 6, 1912. Her letters and diary entries are a treasure trove of her wonderment at the people she met, the landscape, architecture, design, and art she encountered, and her thrill at finally realizing her dream. Her first surviving letter home is twenty-seven pages in length and proclaims: “This is none of I”. 3

Letter (with view of garden), “Dear Everybody,” Ethel Pennewill Brown, January 31, 1913, Private Collection.

Brown describes the New York waterfront as it recedes behind her and informs her family about the people on board, including a couple connected with the steamer company and an Austrian mother who played cards and smoked with the men while ignoring her “enfant terrible” child.  She was asked to take her meals at the captain’s table. She was fascinated by the over a thousand Americans of Serbian origin returning to their homeland to fight the Turks. These soldiers were quartered in the ship’s lower decks, but she met their officers and a Serbian journalist.  Storms also dominated her voyage, as the ship encountered one vicious storm four days out, which prompted “storm racks” to be placed in the dining room. She retold how all the women gathered in the Music Room, where they were tossed to the floor, lying on cushions and clinging to a central circular railing while wicker chairs danced across the room– the wireless apparatus buzzed but gave the captain no outside communication. The RMS Titanic sank mere months earlier on April 15, 1912.

The passengers got their first clear views of the Azores, then the Albanian coast and the Bay of Patras as they neared foreign shores.  A Miss Pilcher, with whom she became friends, had joined the ship for its last leg to Trieste, Italy. Brown’s next letter describes her wintertime stay in Venice, where she wore her winter coat in a Grand Canal gondola.  She boarded the train to Florence, which she described as a “great museum” and sketched the marble architecture, the hats worn by the clergy, and the muzzled horses in the streets. Brown toured the Pitti Palace and noted that she was seeing the ancient sculpture that she had earlier drawn in Antique Class at the Art Students League. She again met interesting people at her Florence pension and undertook a sad trip to the cemetery where Howard Pyle, her mentor, was buried after he had died unexpectedly in Florence in 1911. In Milan, by mid-December, she was at her last stop before reaching Paris.

She arrived in Paris at 11 pm on the evening of December 17 and was met at the Gare de Lyon by Ethel Poyntell Canby [Peets], a longtime fellow Wilmington artist friend who took Brown to her studio at 18 Boulevard Edgar Guinet, where Brown thrillingly expressed that she was finally in Paris, “… the goal of my dreams.”  Ethel Canby began introducing her to the city’s resources and attractions, where she herself had been living for some time.  Brown picked up her letters from home from the American Consulate, bought art supplies, and joined the American Art Students Club, where she viewed a loan exhibition.  Canby took her to a nearby restaurant “where artists go,” commenting that she saw a few “types.”  This was probably Henriette’s café, located two blocks from the Club at 5 rue Leopold Robert, where a mother-and-daughter team ran an inexpensive cremerie and restaurant frequented by artists. Brown described a food market nearby on rue Raspail: “… all like some lovely fair” with fruits, vegetables, fresh green ferns, and linen-clad staff ladling out milk.”  She was particularly taken by the fresh fish “all kinds and all arranged on white marble slabs with fern … it was truly beautiful.”

Ethel Brown’s trunk arrived two days later, and after doing laundry, she and Ethel Canby toured the Tuileries Garden, and she saw her first French circus, a subject that would recur often in her early artwork.  The two then went to the flower stalls at Bon Marché department store, where they purchased lavender.  Before Canby left Brown in her studio for a holiday vacation, she gave a small party for Brown, who recorded that it was her “first taste of Bohemian life. We had a delightful evening … just comfortable … sat and talked …  none of us ‘dressed up’ much …”  There Brown met a Mexican poet, a Harvard man, and a Sorbonne professor’s daughter.

Soon, alone in her friend’s rented studio, Ethel Brown described it to her family:

… all the studio is in shadow below, and the only bright spot is the lamp with its Japanese shade … all is quiet except for the occasional rumble of the Metropole and an artist or two ringing the bell at the door of the courtyard.  It’s a sculptor studio. It stands in a row of studios in a stone-paved courtyard.  About 10 o’clock, the front doorway is closed … and the (woman) concierge opens the big door when residents call out their names.

Ethel Brown already knew several people living in Paris, and she frequently added to this list everywhere she went, telling her family, “I fell among friends, of course.” They included Mrs. Bolton Coit Brown and her children, Anne Goldthwaite, whom she had known in New York (they remained lifelong friends), Hanna Rhett of Charleston, and Virginia Yardley, a distant cousin and artist from Milford, DE, who lived in Paris for many years.

Her first trip to the Louvre was with Mrs. Bolton Coit Brown, and she spent Christmas Day at the American Art Students Club at the invitation of the Club’s director, Roselle Lathrope Shields.  At the end of the year, she described the Club in a family letter and informed them that she was soon to move in as a boarding student:

… a big attractive place … well-equipped in every way—nice dining room with pretty little tables, good food, fine library, papers and magazines—and bath tubs. It was full of girls and women students, so that they have a waiting list … I’ve joined and have just been notified that there is a vacancy for me, so will room there (also board) … If one is to be in Paris for some time, it is better to have a studio, but for a ‘transient’ as I am, I think the Club would be best … I will be comfortable there during the winter weather.

Ethel Brown described the Club’s Christmas dinner.  She went to the Club library in the late afternoon to read the newspapers in her serge dress but had to rush back to the studio to change clothes because the women who began to appear were dressed in their latest French fashions, with bandeaux and head ornaments.  She quoted Kipling: “In more than oriental splendor.” She dressed into her cream mohair “… was glad of it.” She realized that instead of poor art students, as she expected to find, they were more like the girls at a boarding school or the Three Arts, a similar club in New York.

At the Christmas dinner, Brown learned more about the Club atmosphere:

I felt quite modest in my little cream mohair—one girl even had on gold slippers and some of the gowns were really lovely.  I had forgotten about slippers (haven’t bought any, so did not dance except a little with Anne [Goldthwaite], rubber-heeled shoes are not good for dancing!. It was a very pretty dinner… I sat with Ethel Mars and Maude Squire, both of whom do very good work … (they have lived here in Paris for about 12 years. Anne G. and another woman artist). The centerpiece was fruit (artificial) but so clever that we were fooled at first … On opening, we found caps of gay colored tissue and some tiny toy. The room was beautiful with the girls in their tissue caps and lovely evening dresses … really, the evening was a great success and is quite an affair for the girls-I find …

Immediately, Ethel Brown began her art studies at the popular Académie Moderne and described the experience, noting that the life class cost $10 a month and the sketch class only 10 cents, but was 6 cents if a student purchased a full book of tickets:

… how I do love it!  The teacher criticized Saturday, and I like him immensely. He is Charles Guérin, well known in France (not in America). A good critic. The class is very earnest—there are about 25 members, men and women, all working – You could almost hear a pin drop! We have a beautiful girl posing now against a lovely drapery—all opalescent colors—subtle but difficult, but I love doing it. From 4:30 until 7 is croquois—pose every 5 minutes (work like mad) …  then another ½ hour pose, etc. (alternating). It is splendid study.

Receipts from American Art Students Club and Académie Moderne, January 1913, Private Collection.

In the latter days of December 1913, Ethel Brown settled into a routine, attending her art classes and accompanying her friends to Parisian events.  She often went with Anne Goldthwaite to a café near the Sorbonne, which held vaudeville acts that made fun of Americans and where men smoked and drank. She also attended the Ball Bullier with Ethel Canby, a famous dance hall which was “beautiful, fantastic, bizarre and disgustable.” She attended another studio party at Adele Watson’s, an artist she had likely met earlier at the Art Students League in New York.  Hanna Rhett attended, as well, and Brown was taken by the modern aesthetics and decoration of the apartment:

Her china was yellow. She had a green jar of orange and yellow French marigolds on her tea-table and Breton plates, etc. Chinese embroideries … big seven-branched Roman candlestick with lighted candles—‘a chaise lounge’ of blue with orange pillow … The color scheme was daring original and charming! You would have loved the place!

Ethel Brown moved into the American Art Students Club at the beginning of 1913.  In her family letter, she drew the view from her window and described her quarters:

My room is number 11 new building and is so sweet. I brought my flowers … There is a tall white closet and a square white closet with shelves—a bureau and a looking glass, washstand—a table with cover of chintz and blue peacock boarders—a comfortable bed—pale green walls. Big window opening with white curtains.  Hardwood floors—pale green rugs. Steam pipes, immaculate.

Postcard, American Art Students Club, 4, rue de Chevreuse, Paris, Private Collection.

She further described her garden view, her art production, and exploration of the city:

… now as I look out my window, there is brilliant sunlight (on the tall ivy covered wall opposite) and my little view is glowing between the big apartment house and the romantic-looking stone wall (the back of another apartment house, perhaps which faces on the rue Notre Dame de Champs). This green ball is a big ball—of shiny glass—such as we use on Christmas trees—It hangs out in a tiny garden, and I think it is to attract birds, for they have them for sale in the bird market near Notre Dame! They are going to have quite an exhibition here at the club, and tho’ I had no work except 5-minute and 25-minute pencil drawings I have done in class—I had fourteen of my sketch book pages framed on a venture—sent them to the ‘show.’

Then I hustled and did an oil sketch of Miss [Ruth] Tenney and sent it tho’ it wasn’t finished—worked only 9 days on it! …

… I had only been in Paris working 5 weeks and had painted my oil just bit by bit in my bedroom, and Miss Tenney only posed at odd moments (just while she was studying!). Then, today, Monsieur Guérin—our instructor, told me I was making  great progress (I am doing a big canvas of our model) … Ethel wandered through the city-the Louvre, Luxembourg Gardens, and the infinite bookstalls along the Seine, always with her map in her pocket.  She accompanied Goldthwaite and Canby to the Bernheim Jeune modern gallery, where there was a Van Dongenie [sic] exhibition that was ‘horrible, shocking, disgustable French painting—the hardened Parisians even hiding their laughing faces … such terrible drawing, weird subjects, atrocious color—a nightmare … but several sold!’

In March, she attended the Sociètè des Indepèndents in large tents at the Musèe de Cluny filled with Cubists and Futurists and ‘ists’ were rampant … commenting that the art resembled the ancient work of savages, swirling around, “Ah me! Is that what they call Art!” At the Bernheim Jeune gallery again, she saw the work of Matisse, and at the Georges Petit Gallery, she was excited to see Rodin in person: “… a little fat man… a fine head with very bright twinkly eyes.”

One night after window shopping, Brown and her friends visited the Place de la Concorde: She wrote: “The night was misty and all Paris was glowing with light–millions of lights along the Seine—long strings of lights along the Champs Elysées and stretching out in directions … It seemed as tho’ the place was full of fire flies … even the sky was purple.”

Afterward, Ethel Brown attended her croquis class, where she sketched the most popular model in Paris, Carmen, a Spanish girl who chattered away, sang Spanish songs, even danced during rest periods, and munched chocolate given to her by a French student.  She later sketched Carmen again at Goldthwaite’s private studio. With Club friends, she attended a small exhibition of Goldthwaite’s etchings, then went on to another small gathering at a male artist’s studio, where he played Franz and Schubert on his grand piano.  She remarked again on the decoration, noting that his walls, curtains, picture frames, and chairs were a creamy white with a dark polished floor.

Sketch of Carmen (model), “Carmen in her Chocolate Dance,” Ethel Pennewill Brown, Paris, 1913, Private Collection.

She attended lectures at the Club by noted speakers and artists, as well as music recitals featuring Livori Levy.  She saw Isodora Duncan dance Gluck’s Orpheus at the Trocadero, describing her as “grace incarnate.” She again saw Duncan at Paul Debussy’s introduction to his ballet, Jeux.  She noted that Duncan “was always posing somewhat but nevertheless beautiful.”  

The closest Ethel Brown came to involvement with the avant-garde was her friendship with Maude Squire and Ethel Mars, who frequented the Club.  She had recently seen a café scene by Squire in Scribner’s magazine:

Miss Squire and her chum, Miss Ethel Mars, often come to the Club for dinners …  Have been 6 years in Paris! Miss Mars, especially looks quite Parisian! (It’s too funny to see French veneer on so many Americans … long earrings, rings with big stones loom on the first finger … lip rouge—Parisian costumes … I prefer them plain.

Mars and Squire attended the salons of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and Stein adopted the two women as models for her short story titled Miss Furr and Miss Skeene, writing:

… two midwesterners with cultural ambitions—they both dabbled in watercolors—who had arrived in Paris, early in the century, somewhat mousey, tailored, and prim.  Within a year, they were habitues of the local cafes. Miss Mars had dyed her hair flaming orange, and both appeared in public, so heavily made up their faces had the appearance of masks. 4

The two women left Paris at the outbreak of World War I and settled in Provincetown, MA, on Cape Cod, and became a central part of the group known as the Provincetown Printmakers, who perfected the white-line method for color prints.  (AWA Blog #19)

Ethel Brown lost her one opportunity to attend Gertrude Stein’s infamous Parisian Salon. Her lifelong artist friend, Olive Rush (AWA Blog #24), and two other artists, including Ohioan Alice Schille, visited Brown in Paris in the spring as part of their own European excursion.  That group had an invitation to attend the Stein Salon and invited Brown to come along, but she was late connecting with them at their hotel and missed the evening.  In all probability, Ethel Brown would have been very uncomfortable at 27, Rue de Fleurus, under the discerning eyes of Stein and Toklas.  Yet she continued to make friends among American women artists during her time in Paris, including Florence Estè, Rose O’Neill, Marion Campbell Hawthorne, Dorothy Loeb, Elizabeth Nouse, and Winifred Bosworth, among others.

As spring arrived, Ethel Brown and her friends left Paris in order to explore the surrounding countryside to sketch and escape the “avalanche of tourists” in Paris. The group took a train to Senlis, northwest of Paris, near Chantilly, located today close to de Gaulle Airport.  Brown fell in love with picturesque Senlis, describing it as small with much Gothic architecture… a charming old Cathedral and heavenly ruins of the Chateau of Henri IV, a regular dream place—full of mystery and romance.  She compared the chateau to a scene from Tristan and Isolde, where the old Roman ruins of the town formed part of these chateau walls.  Taken not as Americans, but British, the women were amused because the residents of Senlis only knew Americans as “the gilded, splurging kind—with bad manners and loud voices!” She and Winifred Bosworth took quarters at the Convent of St. Joseph de Cluny and sketched in the mornings and often explored the lush hunting region and forests of Halatte, Ermenonville, and Chantilly, which she described as like “a fairy tale.” Some days they walked 14 miles into the countryside. Ethel Canby and her suitor, artist Orville Houghton Peets, joined the women in Senlis. Peets taught them etching techniques and served as a safe, knowledgeable guide on their rural excursions. He led the group to the Joan of Arc festival in Compiègne, to visit the Gobelin and Beauvais tapestries, and to explore the Amiens Cathedral. Orville Peets married Ethel Canby in 1922. In July, more artist friends joined Ethel Brown in Senlis: Olive Rush, Alice Schille, and Philadelphia artist, Clara Madeira.

Photograph of Ethel Brown, Olive Rush, Alice Schille, and Clara Madiera, Front Gates, American Art Students Club, Spring 1913, Private Collection.

Postcard, Le Convent de Saint-Joseph-L’Entrée, Senlis (Oise), France, Private Collection.

While in Senlis, Brown’s watercolor, Le Voiture Blanche, was accepted in the Paris Spring Salon. She was thrilled by this official acceptance, which validated her talents and justified her studies in Paris. Winifred Bostworth’s work was also accepted, and together they returned to Paris for two days to attend the opening of the Société des Indepéndents in the large tents at the Musée de Cluny. She recorded the experience as her group of friends entered the Grand Palais:

… up the marble stairway and through gallery after gallery of paintings good, bad, indifferent. Thousands of square yards of canvases, and it seemed we walked for miles.  Here and there, artists and workmen were retouching or varnishing pictures, some way up on step ladders. The people were well-worth looking at—mostly artists themselves.  Some, I’ll admit, rather ‘freaky!’

They toured all the bustling sections of the oil, etching, miniature, drawing, acquarelle, pastel, and sculpture works. The next day, they headed back to the Vernissage, the day that the public was invited to attend.  Brown and Bosworth bought their catalogues and were amused that their names had been misspelled, but were happy to see that their artworks “were very well placed anyway,” Brown noting: “My watercolor and Miss Bosworth’s pastel are on line and look better than we thought.”

Monsieur Broure, Carte d’Exposant, Salon, Société des Artistes Français, Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées, April 29-June 30, 1913, Private Collection.

Ethel Brown, Ball Bullier, ink drawing in diary, Paris, 1913, Rehoboth Art League, Rehoboth Beach, DE.

In late July, Ethel Brown was ready to return to America.  Her work had received further recognition with invitations to join the International Union of Beaux-Arts and Letters, as well as an invitation to exhibit a watercolor at the prestigious Georges Petit Galleries. It is unknown if she did so because she departed France on August 2, 1913, on the S.S. Rochambeau out of Le Havre, likely in the company of friends Adele Watson and Anne Goldthwaite. The women “spent a large part of the day lying in steamer chairs reading, or else sleeping,” and she wrote her family not to meet her in New York, but at the train in Dover, Delaware.  Brown wrote to family, “Now, I’m ready to come home. I’m going to settle down to real work. Am Wild to.  And I want to read French history and so many things.”

She sailed home from France one month before the outbreak of World War I. Seeming to ignore the threats of war during her stay in Senlis, near the German border, she could not know then that the Europe she had just experienced was about to change forever, from centuries-old traditions and landscape, to a modern world brought on by the horrific events of the War. She kept up with the war news as best she could, and she was especially concerned about the areas around Paris that she had visited. She was overcome with grief when the German army destroyed most of her beloved Senlis in September 1914. Ethel Brown Leach never returned to Europe but became the dean of women artists in Delaware in the first half of the twentieth century.  Her edifying papers include souvenirs and photographs of her French experience—from steamer chair tickets to her official acceptance at the Salon. These offer not only a vignette into the American Art Students Club but also one woman’s fulfillment of her artistic dreams. 5

Ethel Pennewill Brown [Leach], A Student in Paris [Ruth Tenney], oil on canvas, 1913, Private Collection.

ENDNOTES:

1. Jennifer Dasal, The Club: Where American Women Artists Found Refuge in Belle Epoque Paris, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025. [This property has been referred to by several names, including Reid Hall, founded by Mrs. Whitehall Reid, the American Girl’s Club, and the American Art Students Club].
2. Jann Haynes Gilmore, Ethel Pennewill Brown Leach: Delaware Artist of Time, Place, and Season, Wilmington: Historical Society of Delaware, Delaware History [scholarly journal], Fall-Winter 1998-1999 and Spring-Summer, 1999.
3. This author owns the copyright to the above biography and thus is able to paraphrase and direct quote from its contents.
4. James R. Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company, New York: Praeger, 1974, p. 133.
5. Columbia University now owns Reid Hall, the former home of the American Art Students Club in Paris. It recognizes the importance of this art-historical Paris property and, through its Columbia University Global Centers, has undertaken extensive research on the countless women artists who interacted with the Club. Its digital platform gives a timeline, the iterations of Reid Hall, the history of the Club from 1893-1914, and a valuable index of artists associated with it, reidhall.globalcenters.columbia.edu.

INDEX of noted persons described in this essay.

An * denotes the women whom Columbia University, Reid Hall Artist Index, associates with the American Art Students Club.

Ethel Poyntell Canby Peets (1877-1955) Born into an affluent Wilmington, DE family, at age 35, she had a rented studio in Paris from 1912-1913.  She met Ethel Brown [Leach] in Wilmington art school. She met Orville Houghton Peets in Paris, and they wed in America in 1914. During WWI, he stayed in Europe, and she again associated with the Woodstock Art Colony in upstate New York. The couple returned to Europe after the War so he could paint the culture of Spain and Portugal for the Hispanic Society of America.  Around 1927, the couple returned to America and eventually moved to southern Delaware, living close to Ethel and Will Leach (married in 1922).*

Mrs. Bolton Coit [Lucy Hines Fletcher] Brown (n.d.) Wife of artist Coit Brown, who organized the art department at Stanford University and, with Ralph Whitehead, was a founder of Byrdcliffe art colony in Woodstock, NY, and probably knew Ethel Canby Peets in Woodstock.

Anne Wilson Goldthwaite  (See AWA Blog # 27)*  

Hanna McCord Rhett (1871-1940) A South Carolina artist, she studied at the Art Students League (ASL) in New York and in Paris with Collin and Laurens.  She lived her adult life in Charleston, SC, and maintained a summer studio in Brevard, NC.*

Virginia Greer Yardley (1878-1971) Attended Bryn Mawr College and studied at the ASL and in Paris at the Académie Colarossi and Académie Julian. Her oeuvre was in the modernist genre, having been influenced by teachers Maurice Sterne, Morris Kantor, Kenneth Miller, and Vaclav Vytlacil. At one time, she was the partner of Eva Palmer [Sikelianos], and in Paris, she knew Isadora Duncan, Natalie Barney, and her mother, all part of the avant-garde. She lived in Europe from 1912 to 1941 in Dieppe, Paris, and London (during WWI).

Charles Francois-Prosper Guérin (1875-1939) An anti-academic painter, lithographer, and illustrator who studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.  He taught at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and Académie Moderne. He was a Post-Impressionist who made frequent use of primary colors. Guérin was a well-known juror at the French Salons, which accepted Matisse and Rouault.  He showed two works at the Armory Show in NY in 1913.

Fannie Adele Watson (1873-1947) Born in Toledo, OH, her family moved to CA in 1917. She studied at the ASL and in Paris with Raphael Collin.  She was called a symbolist artist, and her work is compared to that of Arthur B. Davies for its dreamlike spiritualism.  She died in Pasadena, CA.

Ruth Tenney (n.d.) Born in Peking, China, her father was in the Foreign Service.  She studied art at Radcliffe College in NY and music in Great Britain and France.

Bernheim-Jeune Opened in 1863, it was one of the oldest art galleries in Paris and specialized in Realism and the Barbizon School, and introduced the first Impressionist show in Paris in 1874. It was the first to show Van Gogh’s work in Paris,, and over the years it promoted artists such as Bonnard, Vuillard, Cezanne, Dufy, Modigliani, and Marie Laurencin. During WWII, the Nazi’s confiscated most of its holdings.  It closed permanently in 2019.

Kees van Dongen (1877-1968) A Dutch/French painter and, in his era, a leading Fauvist, Symbolist, and Pointillist.  Often accepted into the Salons, van Dongen’s work employed radical colors and often depicted nightlife.  He died in Monaco.

Georges Petit Galleries Opened in 1881, it represented Impressionist painters. A rival of the gallerist Durand-Ruel, Georges Petit was a formidable salesman and convinced many painters to join him.  After his death, Bernheim-Jeune bought the Petit Galleries.

Carmen [Gaudin] Said to have been the most popular model in Paris, she was discovered by Toulouse-Lautrec in Montmartre.  She had flaming red hair that often shows up in renderings of her.

Maude Hunt Squire (1873-1954) A painter and printmaker born in Illinois.  She met Ethel Mars while studying art at the University of Cincinnati.  She also studied with Frank Duveneck.  She lived in Paris with Mars from 1903 to 1915.  She illustrated children’s books with Ethel Mars and returned with her to Provincetown, MA, before the War, where the two women helped develop the “white-line” method of color printmaking. After WWI, the two returned to France and, in the 1920s, eventually moved to Vence on the French Riviera, where they lived until their deaths.  They are buried together in Vence.*

Ethel Mars (1876-1956) Born in Springfield IL, she was a painter, printmaker, and creator of rag tapestries. She collaborated with Maude Squire on the illustrations for the popular children’s book, A Child’s Garden of Verse.*

Olive Rush (see AWA Blog # 24)*

Florence Esté (1859-1926) Born in Cincinnati, OH, she was a painter and etcher and was influenced by Japanese art.  She exhibited two watercolors in the 1913 Armory Show.  Esté died in Paris.*

Rose O’Neill (1874-1944) Born in Wilkes-Barre, PA, she was mostly a self-taught artist (at one point she studied sculpture with Rodin in Paris) and an illustrator who invented the cartoon comic strip, Kewpie Dolls, in 1907, and manufactured these dolls into bisque toys. Advertising these dolls in Ladies Home Journal, they were the first mass-produced toys in America.  She later bought property in Nebraska, where she built her lifetime home.  The Great Depression brought the Kewpie Doll phenomenon in America to an end.

Ethel Marion Campbell Hawthorne (1870-1945) Born in Illinois, she grew up in Richmond, ME, in a sea captain family.  She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and with William Merritt Chase. In 1903, she married Charles Webster Hawthorne, a student of William Merritt Chase who helped Chase establish his Shinnecock Summer School on Long Island. Later, Hawthorne became the noted teacher of the Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown.  Marion Campbell had served as Chase’s secretary in Shinnecock.

Dorothy Loeb (1887-1971) Born in Germany, she was a modernist painter, muralist, and printmaker. Active in Chicago, she studied with Birge Harrison at AIC until 1940, and worked for social justice causes, including teaching art at Hull House, the famous Chicago settlement house.  She moved to Cape Cod, studied with Charles Hawthorne in Provincetown, and was a member of the Provincetown Printmakers, exhibiting her work with friend Blanche Lazell.  She studied in Munich and in Paris with Léger and L. Marcoussis.

Elizabeth Nourse (1859-1938) An Ohioan, she lived in France and received international recognition as a painter. She had studied art in Cincinnati and in Paris with Boulanger and Lefebvre at the Académie Julian and privately with Carolus-Duran.  She remained in Paris during WWI, aiding families of artists and refugees.  Her work is owned by the French government.*

Winifred Bosworth [Downes] (1885-1972) Born in Elgin, IL, she studied at the AIC, ASL, and went to Munich and Paris in 1912 to study at the Académie Julian. She accompanied Ethel Brown to Senlis in Spring 1913 and produced etchings there, including one in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.  She married an architect in 1920 after 11 years of courtship and was plagued later in life with mental issues.  Her pastel titled Femmes sur la Plage was accepted at the 1913 Spring Salon along with Brown’s artwork.*

Orville Houghton Peets (1884-1966) Born in Cleveland, he was a painter, printmaker, and described as a Renaissance artist.  He studied in Munich and in Paris at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux Arts.  He was influenced by Whistler’s work and knew the artist’s family.  He married Ethel Canby in 1914 and, after WWI, worked for the Hispanic Society of America, recording the culture of Spain and Portugal. Until the early 1930s, the couple lived in the Woodstock, NY art colony, but moved permanently to southern Delaware, where he was active in teaching art and promoting arts organizations.  His portrait of Ethel Canby is owned by the French government.

Alice Schille (1869-1955) Born in Columbus, OH, she was a watercolor painter and art teacher at the Columbus Art School from 1902 to 1942. She studied at the ASL with Chase, Mowbray, and Cox, and in Paris with Prinet, Collin, Courtois, and at the Académie Colarossi. She traveled the world to paint and was a perennial exhibitor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.  She spent several summers in Santa Fe, NM, painting and visiting Olive Rush. Considered a Fauvist, Schille’s artwork gained international recognition.*

Clara Madiera (d. 1929) Watercolor artist from Philadelphia who studied at the PAFA and in Paris with Simon and Cottet.  Along with Schille and Rush, she met Ethel Brown in Paris in the spring of 1913 and traveled with the group to Senlis, France.