Jeanne Robert Foster

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Jeanne Robert Foster (John Butler Yeats, 1917) Jeanne Robert Foster, by John Butler Yeats.jpg
Jeanne Robert Foster (John Butler Yeats, 1917)

Jeanne Robert Foster (March 10, 1879 – September 22, 1970) was an American poet from the Adirondack Mountains. She was born Julia Elizabeth Oliver in Johnsburg, New York.

Adirondack Mountains Mountain range in northern New York state, USA

The Adirondack Mountains form a massif in northeastern New York, United States. Its boundaries correspond to the boundaries of Adirondack Park. The mountains form a roughly circular dome, about 160 miles (260 km) in diameter and about 1 mile (1,600 m) high. The current relief owes much to glaciation.

Johnsburg, New York Town in New York, United States

Johnsburg is a town in the northwest corner of Warren County, New York, United States. It is part of the Glens Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area. The town population was 2,450 at the 2000 census. The town is named after John Thurman, an early settler and founder. Johnsburg is the largest town in Warren County by area.

In 1896 she married Matlock Foster, and lived in Rochester, New York. She studied drama at the Stanhope-Wheatcroft Dramatic School, and worked in magazine journalism. She attended Radcliffe College and Boston University simultaneously as a special student. Professor Charles Townsend Copeland of Harvard was her personal instructor for three years and was a strong influence. [1] She became a leading fashion model. In 1903 she was chosen as the "Harrison Fisher Girl". [2] The couple then moved to Boston; she continued to work as a journalist there and in New York, becoming literary editor of the American Review of Reviews. In 1913, the year of the Exhibition of Modern Art in New York, she wrote an article [3] featuring Cezanne, Picaso, Derain, Seurat, and other modernists. This was at a time when defense of modern art brought forth hostile criticism. Through the publicity she received from the article, she became acquainted with John Quinn. [4] Although she would become the dearest friend of Quinn's last years, at this stage she kept her distance because she had been warned Quinn was a dangerous man for a young woman to know. [5]

Rochester, New York City in New York, United States

Rochester is a city on the southern shore of Lake Ontario in western New York. With a population of 208,046 residents, Rochester is the seat of Monroe County and the third most populous city in New York state, after New York City and Buffalo. The metropolitan area has a population of just over 1 million people. It is about 73 miles (117 km) east of Buffalo and 87 miles (140 km) west of Syracuse.

Charles Townsend Copeland American academic

Charles Townsend Copeland was a professor, poet, and writer.

Harrison Fisher American illustrator, painter, 1875-1934

Harrison Fisher was an American illustrator.

In 1916 she began to publish narrative verse about the Adirondacks. Her books, "Wild Apples" and "Neighbors of Yesterday", were published in 1916 followed by "Rock Flower". [6] A play "Marthe" won the Drama League prize in 1926. [7] From this period she traveled in Europe, met important figures of modernism, and co-operated with the collector John Quinn in building up his contemporary art collection. In 1922, she accepted the American editorship of the Transatlantic Review published simultaneously in New York and Paris and edited by Ford Madox Ford. [8] After Quinn's death in 1924 Jeanne helped prepare the collection of his letters that became the John Quinn Memorial Collection at the New York Public Library. The collection includes an extensive correspondence with Joseph Conrad.

Modernism movement of art, culture and philosophy

Modernism is a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by reactions of horror to World War I. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief.

John Quinn (collector) American lawyer and art collector

John Quinn was an Irish-American cognoscente of the art world; and a lawyer in New York City who fought to overturn censorship laws restricting modern literature and art from entering the United States.

Ford Madox Ford English writer and publisher

Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature.

She loved Maine and spent time at a cottage there with her sister, Mrs. Theodore H. Smith of Detroit. [9] In 1932 she moved to Schenectady, where she worked as a social worker.

Maine State of the United States of America

Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. Maine is the 12th smallest by area, the 9th least populous, and the 38th most densely populated of the 50 U.S. states. It is bordered by New Hampshire to the west, the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and northwest respectively. Maine is the easternmost state in the contiguous United States, and the northernmost state east of the Great Lakes. It is known for its jagged, rocky coastline; low, rolling mountains; heavily forested interior; and picturesque waterways, as well as its seafood cuisine, especially lobster and clams. There is a humid continental climate throughout most of the state, including in coastal areas such as its most populous city of Portland. The capital is Augusta.

Detroit Largest city in Michigan

Detroit is the largest and most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan, the largest United States city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of Wayne County. The municipality of Detroit had a 2017 estimated population of 673,104, making it the 23rd-most populous city in the United States. The metropolitan area, known as Metro Detroit, is home to 4.3 million people, making it the second-largest in the Midwest after the Chicago metropolitan area. Regarded as a major cultural center, Detroit is known for its contributions to music and as a repository for art, architecture and design.

Jeanne's friends included many of the period's leading authors and artists. She was particularly close to Ford Madox Ford, Ezra Pound, and William Butler Yeats. She also had a relationship with the English author and occultist Aleister Crowley.

Ezra Pound American poet and critic

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an expatriate American poet and critic, and a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement. His contribution to poetry began with his development of Imagism, a movement derived from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language. His works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) and the unfinished 120-section epic, The Cantos (1917–1969).

She is buried near her friend John Butler Yeats, the painter and father of William Butler Yeats, in the Chestertown Rural Cemetery in the Adirondacks. Her own papers can be found in the Jeanne R. Foster-William M. Murphy Collection at the New York Public Library and at Harvard University's Houghton Library, which holds her correspondence with poet and author Ezra Pound.

John Butler Yeats Irish artist

John Butler Yeats was an Irish artist and the father of William Butler Yeats, Lily Yeats, Elizabeth Corbett "Lolly" Yeats and Jack B. Yeats. The National Gallery of Ireland holds a number of his portraits in oil and works on paper, including one of his portraits of his son William, painted in 1900. His portrait of John O'Leary (1904) is considered his masterpiece.

New York Public Library Public library system in New York City

The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States and the third largest in the world. It is a private, non-governmental, independently managed, nonprofit corporation operating with both private and public financing.

Harvard University private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with about 6,700 undergraduate students and about 15,250 postgraduate students. Established in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, clergyman John Harvard, Harvard is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning, and its history, influence, and wealth have made it one of the world's most prestigious universities.

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References

  1. "Woman Poet of World Wide Fame Finds Inspiration For Literary Successes Along Coast of Maine", Portland Sunday Telegram, 1930, by Laurence Paul Crowley
  2. The Adirondack Review, Richard Londraville,
  3. Art Revolutionists on Exhibition, Review of Reviews, XLX11 (1913), 441-8
  4. Portland Sunday Telegram, 1930, Laurence Paul Crowley
  5. The Man From New York, John Quinn And His Friends, 1968, p. 148
  6. The Adirondack Review, Richard Londraville, www.theandirondackreview.com/articlelondraville.html
  7. Portland Sunday Telegram, 1930, Laurence Paul Crowley
  8. Portland Sunday Telegram. 1930, Laurence Paul Crowley
  9. Portland Sunday Telegram, 1930, Laurence Paul Crowley