Emma Homan Thayer | |
|---|---|
 Emma Homan Thayer, ca. 1897. | |
| Born | Emma Homan 1842 New York, New York, U.S.A. |
| Died | 1908 Denver, Colorado, U.S.A. |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse(s) | George A. Graves (1860–64) Elmer A. Thayer (1877–1908) |
Emma Homan Thayer (1842–1908) was a 19th-century American botanical artist and author of books about native wildflowers. She also wrote several novels.
Emma Homan was born in New York City on Feb. 13, 1842, the daughter of George Wand and Emma Homan. [1] [2] [3] Her father was a businessman and the first person to operate omnibuses on Broadway in New York. [4] A portrait of her as a very young child (ca. 1843) by the painter John Bradley is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [5] It was painted in the village of Wading River on Long Island. [6] Her father moved the family to Omaha, Nebraska, when she was around 15, and a few years later, in 1860, she married George A. Graves, who went on to work for the war department in Washington, D.C. [4] They had two children, Amy (1861–1892) and Byron (b. 1862). [7]
John Bradley was a British-born American artist who was active in the New York area in the 1830s and 1840s. He is primarily known for his portrait paintings, which are held in several North American museum collections.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the United States. With 7.3 million visitors to its three locations in 2016, it was the fourth most visited art museum in the world, and the fifth most visited museum of any kind. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The main building, on the eastern edge of Central Park along Museum Mile in Manhattan's Upper East Side is by area one of the world's largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from Medieval Europe. On March 18, 2016, the museum opened the Met Breuer museum at Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side; it extends the museum's modern and contemporary art program.
Wading River is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in Suffolk County, New York, United States, on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the 2010 census, the CDP population was 7,719. It is adjacent to Shoreham and shares a school district.
Emma Homan Graves was widowed after only four years of marriage, at which point she decided to pursue higher education. [2] She attended Rutgers Female College for a time [1] and then enrolled at the National Academy of Design, where she studied painting. She became one of the earliest members of the Art Students League of New York. [1] [3] Her figure paintings and still lives were exhibited in New York and elsewhere and won two gold medals. [2]
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, commonly referred to as Rutgers University, Rutgers, or RU, is a public research university in New Jersey. It is the largest institution of higher education in New Jersey.
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fine arts in America through instruction and exhibition."
The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists and for over 130 years has maintained a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a flexible schedule to accommodate students from all walks of life.
In 1877 she married again, to Elmer A. Thayer of Massachusetts, who was a manager for hotels on the Denver and Rio Grande lines. [2] [3] [8] They moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she continued her career as a painter. With Thayer, she had two more children, both of whom died rather young (before 1899). [7] In 1882, they moved to Colorado, where she shifted from figure painting to botanical art, focusing on wild flowers native to America depicted in natural settings. [9] Her first book was Wild Flowers of Colorado (1885), illustrated with 24 chromolithographs of her watercolors accompanying a description of her travels throughout the state. It was followed two years later by Wild Flowers of the Pacific Coast, which was similarly framed around a travel narrative. The flowers in both books are painted in a lively, impressionistic style without great attention to scientific detail. Part of the appeal of Thayer's books stemmed from the first-person, diaristic style she used to recount her camping trips and mild adventures in pursuit of unusual flowers in sometimes rugged terrain. [3] [9] In her book on Colorado wild flowers, Thayer was the first person to report that giant helleborine can be found in that state. [10]
In the same year that Wild Flowers of Colorado was published, claims were made that Thayer had based some of her watercolors for the book on sketches made by a Colorado Springs botanical artist, Alice Stewart Hill, rather than on her own drawings. [8] [11] While these claims were strongly contested by people who had actually accompanied Thayer on her trips and seen her at work, [11] it emerged that Thayer had bought some flower studies from Hill and may have borrowed some compositional elements from Hill's work. [8] There was no lawsuit, however, so the extent of Thayer's borrowing from Hill was never fully settled. [8] In 1889, Thayer published a new edition of Wild Flowers of Colorado under the title Wild Flowers of the Rocky Mountains; the only changes were to the cover and title page. [8] It has been suggested that this alteration was made so that it would not compete so directly with Alice Hill's 1886 book The Procession of Flowers in Colorado. [8]
Thayer also wrote several novels, including An English-American (1889), Petronilla, the Sister (1898), A Legend of Glenwood Springs (1900), and Dorothy Scudder's Science (1901). All of her books sold well, and many of them went through numerous editions. [7] However, The Mortgage Foreclosed: A Story of the Farm (1890?), though written by an E.H. Thayer, is apparently not her work. She stated that the author of that novel had used her initials as well as some of her characters in order to market it, falsely, as "Mrs Thayer's new book". [12]
Thayer died in Denver, Colorado, in 1908.
Marian Ellis Rowan, known as Ellis Rowan, was a well-known Australian artist and botanical illustrator. She also did a series of illustrations on birds, butterflies and insects.
Emma Lampert Cooper was a painter from Rochester, New York, described as "a painter of exceptional ability". She studied in Rochester, New York; New York City under William Merritt Chase, Paris at the Académie Delécluse and in the Netherlands under Hein Kever. Cooper won awards at several World's Expositions, taught art and was an art director. She met her husband, Colin Campbell Cooper in the Netherlands and the two traveled, painted and exhibited their works together.
Lydia Field Emmet was an American artist best known for her work as a portraitist. She studied with, among others, prominent artists such as William Merritt Chase, Harry Siddons Mowbray, Kenyon Cox and Tony Robert-Fleury. Emmet exhibited widely during her career, and her paintings can now be found hanging in the White House, and many prestigious art galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Clara Elsene Peck was an American illustrator and painter known for her illustrations of women and children in the early 20th century. Peck received her arts education from the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts and was employed as a magazine illustrator from 1906-1940. Peck's body of work encompasses a wide range, from popular women's magazines and children's books, works of fiction, commercial art for products like Ivory soap, and comic books and watercolor painting later in her career. Peck worked during the "Golden Age of American Illustration" (1880s-1930s) contemporaneous with noted female illustrators Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley.
Fidelia Bridges was an American artist of the late 19th century, and one of the few women to have a successful career in that period. She was known for delicately detailed paintings that captured flowers, plants, and birds in their natural settings. Although she began as an oil painter, she later gained a reputation as an expert in watercolor painting. She was the only woman among a group of seven artists in the early years of the American Watercolor Society. Some of her work was published as illustrations in books and magazines and on greeting cards.
Anne Goldthwaite (1869–1944) was an American painter and printmaker and an advocate of women's rights and equal rights.
Alice Brown Chittenden was an American painter based in San Francisco, California who specialized in flowers, portraits, and landscapes. Her life's work was a collection of botanicals depicting California wildflowers, for which she is renowned and received gold and silver medals at expositions. She taught at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art from 1897 to 1941.
Jennie Augusta Brownscombe was an American painter, designer, etcher, commercial artist and illustrator. Brownscombe studied art for years in the United States and in Paris. She was a founding member, student and teacher at the Art Students League of New York. She made genre paintings, including revolutionary and colonial American history, most notably The First Thanksgiving held at Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, Massachusetts. She sold the reproduction rights to more than 100 paintings, and images of her work have appeared on prints, calendars and greeting cards. Her works are in many public collections and museums. In 1899 she was described by New York World as "one of America's best artists."
Edith Haworth (1878-1953) was an American painter, who studied art in New York and showed her work in New York City and Detroit, Michigan, particularly at the Detroit Institute of Arts. In 1903 she was co-founder and treasurer of the Detroit Society of Women Painters.
Polly Thayer (Starr) (1904–2006) was a Boston painter and pastel artist. When she was still in her twenties she became known for portraits and figure compositions in the tradition of the Boston School, but took a more Modernist approach after leaving academia. She became increasingly interested in conveying the invisible essences of landscape, flowers and living creatures as her career developed, and was noted for the skilled draftsmanship which provided the substructure of her work.
Margaret Neilson Armstrong (1867–1944) was a 20th-century American designer, illustrator, and author. She is best known for her book covers in the Art Nouveau style but also wrote and illustrated the first comprehensive guide to wildflowers of the American west. She also wrote mystery novels and biographies.
Ellen Robbins (1828–1905) was a 19th-century American botanical illustrator known for paintings of wildflowers and autumn leaves. She was one of the contributors to the first annual exhibition of the American Watercolor Society in 1867/1868.
Helen Maria Turner was an American painter and teacher, known for her work in oils, watercolors and pastels in which she created miniatures, landscapes, still lives and portraits, often in an Impressionist style.
Clarissa Munger Badger (1806–1889) was a mid 19th century American botanical illustrator best known for three volumes of flower paintings accompanied by poetry. She also painted on textiles.
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Alice Beckington was an American painter.
Ellen "Nelly" Thayer Fisher was an American botanical illustrator. Fisher exhibited her paintings at the National Academy of Design and other exhibitions. She was an active contributor to the exhibitions of the American Watercolor Society, beginning in 1872. In addition to being shown in galleries and exhibitions, her paintings of flora and fauna were widely reproduced as chromolithographs by Boston publisher Louis Prang.
Emily Maria Scott was an American artist. The New York Watercolor Club, and the Pen and Brush Club were formed in her studio. She was also a writer of magazine articles. She served as president of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, vice president New York Water Color Club, and was a member of the Pen and Brush Club, the American Water Color Society, the New York Women's Art Club, and the National Arts Club."
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