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) [1] [2] 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.". [1] [3] [4] [5]
Young women paid $30 per month for room and board. [1] The club served tea at 4pm and taught evening lessons in French for one franc per day. [1] It included libraries and an independent studio, although did not include enough space for a full bath. [1] 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. [2] The building is now owned by Columbia University as Reid Hall. [2]
Eliza Cecilia Beaux was an American artist and the first woman to teach art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Known for her elegant and sensitive portraits of friends, relatives, and Gilded Age patrons, Beaux painted many famous subjects including First Lady Edith Roosevelt, Admiral Sir David Beatty and Georges Clemenceau.
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 a great period of effervescence in the arts in the early twentieth century. After 1968, it integrated with the École supérieure de design, d'art graphique et d'architecture intérieure (ESAG) Penninghen.
Keuka College is a private college in Keuka Park, New York, situated on Keuka Lake. Founded in 1890, the college emphasizes experiential learning as well as career and pre-professional education. It is classified among "Master's Colleges and Universities (small)" and accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. The college offers both bachelor's and master's degrees.
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.
Jules Joseph Lefebvre was a French painter, educator and theorist.
The Académie Colarossi (1870–1930) was an art school in Paris founded in 1870 by the Italian model and sculptor Filippo Colarossi. It was originally located on the Île de la Cité, and it moved in 1879 to 10 rue de la Grande-Chaumière in the 6th arrondissement. The school closed in the 1930s.
Laura Muntz Lyall was a Canadian Impressionist painter, known for her sympathetic portrayal of women and children.
Sir John Campbell Longstaff was an Australian painter, war artist and a five-time winner of the Archibald Prize for portraiture. Longstaff was one of the most prolific portraitists of the Edwardian period, painting many high society figures in both Australia and Britain.
Louise Catherine Breslau was a German-born Swiss painter, who learned drawing to pass the time while bedridden with chronic asthma. She studied art at the Académie Julian in Paris, and exhibited at the salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, where she became a respected colleague of noted figures such as Edgar Degas and Anatole France.
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.
Le Dôme Café or Café du Dôme is a restaurant in Montparnasse, Paris that first opened in 1898. Based on the example established by La Closerie des Lilas and followed by Café de la Rotonde, Le Select, and La Coupole, Le Dôme was renowned as an intellectual gathering place for artists and writers during the interwar period. Le Dôme created and disseminated gossip and provided message exchanges and an 'over the table' market that dealt in artistic and literary futures. It was frequented by painters and sculptors of the School of Paris as well as writers, poets, models, art connoisseurs and dealers.
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.
Alice Barber Stephens was an American painter and engraver, best remembered for her illustrations. Her work regularly appeared in magazines such as Scribner's Monthly, Harper's Weekly, and The Ladies Home Journal.
Edmund Charles Tarbell was an American Impressionist painter. A member of the Ten American Painters, his work hangs in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Corcoran Gallery of Art, DeYoung Museum, National Academy Museum and School, New Britain Museum of American Art, Worcester Art Museum, and numerous other collections. He was a leading member of a group of painters which came to be known as the Boston School.
Gustave Achille Guillaumet was a French painter. He is best known for his paintings of North Africa.
Henri Paul Royer was a French painter, remembered especially for his genre works from Brittany. A painter of genre, portraitist and landscape artist, he travelled throughout America and Europe during his life.
Anna Massey Lea Merritt was an American artist from Philadelphia who lived and worked in Great Britain for most of her life. A printmaker and painter of portraits, landscapes, and religious scenes, Merritt's art was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites. Merritt was a professional artist for most of her adult life, "living by her brush" before her brief marriage to Henry Merritt and after his death.
Alice De Wolf Kellogg was an American painter whose work was exhibited at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.
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.