The American Girls' Club in Paris was a boarding house for young American women aged eighteen to forty located at 4 Rue de Chevreuse in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, France. The club was founded in September 1893 by the American Elizabeth Mills Reid (wife of Whitelaw Reid, the former United States Ambassador to France) ref name = "SFCall">San Francisco Call (21 November 1909), Page 4.</ref> [1] and Mrs. Helen Pert Newell (wife of Reverend William Whiting Newell II, pastor of St. Lukes Chapel, Paris).https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1894/01/26/104106007.html?pageNumber=3 Its purpose was to provide "place for meeting and for sociablllty for those who by reason of their unfamiliarity with the language and the people of the country must otherwise be lonely and be handicapped, by their ignorance.". [2] [3] [4] [5]
Young women paid $30 per month for room and board. [2] The club served tea at 4pm and taught evening lessons in French for one franc per day. [2] It included libraries and an independent studio, although did not include enough space for a full bath. [2] Students often studied at the Académie Julian and Académie de la Grande Chaumière art schools. The club closed with the onset of World War I and was converted to an American Red Cross hospital. [1] The building is now owned by Columbia University as Reid Hall. [1]
The Académie Julian was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907) that was active from 1868 through 1968. It remained famous for the number and quality of artists who attended during the great period of effervescence in the arts in the early twentieth century. After 1968, it integrated with ESAG Penninghen.
Beaux-Arts architecture was the academic architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, particularly from the 1830s to the end of the 19th century. It drew upon the principles of French neoclassicism, but also incorporated Renaissance and Baroque elements, and used modern materials, such as iron and glass, and later, steel. It was an important style and enormous influence in Europe and the Americas through the end of the 19th century, and into the 20th, particularly for institutional and public buildings.
George Brown Petty IV was an American pin-up artist. His pin-up art appeared primarily in Esquire and Fawcett Publications's True but was also in calendars marketed by Esquire, True and Ridgid Tool Company. Petty's Esquire gatefolds originated and popularized the magazine device of centerfold spreads. Reproductions of his work, known as "Petty Girls," were widely rendered by military artists as nose art decorating warplanes during the Second World War, including the Memphis Belle.
Willard Leroy Metcalf was an American painter born in Lowell, Massachusetts. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and later attended Académie Julian, Paris. After early figure-painting and illustration, he became prominent as a landscape painter. He was one of the Ten American Painters who in 1897 seceded from the Society of American Artists. For some years he was an instructor in the Women's Art School, Cooper Union, New York, and in the Art Students League, New York. In 1893 he became a member of the American Watercolor Society, New York. Generally associated with American Impressionism, he is also remembered for his New England landscapes and involvement with the Old Lyme Art Colony at Old Lyme, Connecticut and his influential years at the Cornish Art Colony.
Jules Joseph Lefebvre was a French painter, educator and theorist.
Whitelaw Reid was an American politician, diplomat and newspaper editor, as well as the author of Ohio in the War, a popular work of history.
Laura Muntz Lyall was a Canadian Impressionist painter, known for her sympathetic portrayal of women and children.
Henri-Michel-Antoine Chapu was a French sculptor in a modified Neoclassical tradition who was known for his use of allegory in his work.
Robert Lewis Reid was an American Impressionist painter and muralist. His work tended to be very decorative, much of it centered on depiction of young women set among flowers. He later became known for his murals and designs in stained glass.
The Académie de la Grande Chaumière is an art school in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France.
Arthur F. Mathews was an American Tonalist painter who was one of the founders of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. Trained as an architect and artist, he and his wife Lucia Kleinhans Mathews had a significant effect on the evolution of Californian art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His students include Granville Redmond, Xavier Martinez, Armin Hansen, Percy Gray, Gottardo Piazzoni, Ralph Stackpole, Mary Colter, Maynard Dixon, Rinaldo Cuneo and Francis McComas.
Reid Hall is a complex of academic facilities owned and operated by Columbia University that is located in the Montparnasse quartier of Paris, France. It houses the Columbia University Institute for Scholars in addition to various graduate and undergraduate divisions of over a dozen American colleges and universities. For over a century, Reid Hall has served as a link between the academic communities of the United States and France.
Guy Orlando Rose was an American Impressionist painter and California resident, who received national recognition in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
George Agnew Reid who signed his name as G. A. Reid was a Canadian artist, painter, influential educator and administrator. He is best known as a genre painter, but his work encompassed the mural, and genre, figure, historical, portrait and landscape subjects.
Decorative Impressionism is an art historical term that is credited to the art writer Christian Brinton, who first used it in 1911. Brinton titled an article on the American expatriate painter Frederick Carl Frieseke, one of the members of the famous Giverny Colony of American Impressionists, "The Decorative Impressionist."
Otis William Oldfield was a San Francisco painter, printmaker and art educator.
Cyrus Cincinato Cuneo, known as Ciro, was an American-born English visual artist, best known for painting.
Susan Watkins was an American artist, known for painting in the styles of realism and impressionism. She studied under William Merritt Chase and Raphaël Collin. Two of her pieces are on permanent display at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia.
Augusta Payne Briggs Rathbone was an American painter, etcher and printmaker. She studied at the University of California, Berkeley and in Paris. She depicted people and locations from San Francisco, the Sierra, New York City, the West Coast of Canada, the Canadian Rockies, and France. In 1938, she published a book of aquatints of French Riviera Villages with photographs by Juliet Thompson and text by Virginia Thompson. Her work appeared internationally in group and solo exhibitions, and continues to appear in retrospectives of American printmaking.