Mary Rogers Williams: Difference between revisions

Mary Rogers Williams was born and raised in [[Hartford, Connecticut]], the fifth of six children of Edward Williams (1822–1871), a prosperous baker, and Mary Ann French Williams (1824-1861). Mary and her surviving sisters Lucy, Abby and Laura were all star students at [[Hartford Public High School]], and none ever married. Mary Rogers Williams's early mentor was [[James Wells Champney]], and she studied at the [[Art Students League]] with [[William Merritt Chase]] and at Hartford's Decorative Art Society before taking the Smith post. (A Hartford neighbor and family friend, Lindley Williams Hubbell, became a renowned poet.) Her classes thereat Smith included drawing, painting, sculpture, art history, "study of design with practical work" and "artistic anatomy", and she wrote a catalog of the college's plaster cast sculpture collection. She occasionally visited New York, stopping by the studio of her friend [[Albert Pinkham Ryder]].

Almost every summer, she traveled in Europe, drawingattracting crowds in villages when she sketched the scenery and locals. She oftensometimes walked between towns, partly because she could not afford car or carriage fees, and would set off to "catch a sketch" or "find a sketch," as she wrote to her sisters. Although she was [[Episcopal Church (United States)|Episcopalian]], she attended [[Catholic]] church services in Europe (sometimes numerous times in a row on Sundays) and wrote lavish descriptions of the costumes and music to her sisters. She had a Hartford-made bicycle shipped overseas for traveling in the countryside. She lived in [[Paris, France|Paris]] in 1898–99 (she studied then at the [[Ecole des Beaux-Arts]] and with [[James Abbott McNeill Whistler]]) and 1906–07, in flats on rue Boissonade, with numerous other painters nearby.

A member of the New York [[Woman's Art Club of New York|Woman’s Art Club]], she exhibited there (1899, 1902, 1903) and at venues including the [[American Water Color Society]] (1892), Art Association of Indianapolis (1895), [[Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts]] (1895, 1896, 1902–04), Gill's Art Galleries, Springfield, Massachusetts (1898), [[American GirlsGirl's Club, in Paris]] (1898, 1907), [[National Academy Museum and School|National Academy of Design]] (1903–04), [[New York Water Color Club]] (1892–96, 1899-1902), Society of American Artists (1896), Macbeth Gallery (1902—she1902, 1903—she also commissioned "aquarium"-like frames from Macbeth, with a glass layer an inch away from the delicate pastel surface) and [[Paris Salon]] (1899). Commemorative posthumous shows were held in 1908 and 1909 at the Philadelphia Water Color Club (at Pennsylvania Academy), [[New York Water Color Club]] and [[Wadsworth Atheneum]] and Hartford Art Society in Hartford. Publications that praised her include the ''[[New York Times]]'', the ''[[Hartford Courant]]'', the ''[[Springfield Republican]]'' and various art magazines. In 1894, in an article in the ''Quarterly Illustrator'' (vol. 2, no. 6, p. 111-124), the novelist [[Elizabeth Williams Champney]] described Mary Williams as "an artist with rare poetic instinct and feeling" and "a woman of conscience as well as feeling, and of a fine scorn for all shams." The Champney article added, "When asked what style she proposed to adopt, she replied: 'If I cannot have a style of my own, I trust I may be spared an adopted one.{{'"}}

Williams died of a suddenfew days after she was diagnosed with abdominal illnesstumors in [[Florence]] and is buried in the [[Cimitero degli Allori|Allori]] cemetery there (there is also a marker for her with her sisterssiblings' and parents' graves in [[Spring Grove Cemetery]] in Hartford). Family and friends kept her paintings inventory together, and most remain in a private New England collection. Institutions that have her work include the [[Smith College Museum of Art]], [[Connecticut Landmarks]] and the [[Connecticut Historical Society]],—the latter whichboth ownsown Williams' portraitportraits of her friend and patron, the New Haven antiquarian George Dudley Seymour.

Virtually all biographical information for Mary Rogers Williams (1857–1907) comes from her archive in a private New England collection, a promised gift to Smith College, which contains diary entries, sketches, letters and clippings and other ephemera including concert programs and confetti from Paris parades. She wrote home from her frequent trips in Europe almost every day, delving into topics including her works in progress, passing scenery, treatment of women travelers, and her criticisms of ancient building restorations and of art and recent art restorations in European museums and gallery shows. The handwritten material confirms, corrects and fleshes out information published about her in publications including ''[[Art Amateur]]'', the Macbeth Gallery's Art Notes, ''[[Boston Journal]]'', ''[[Brooklyn Daily Eagle]]'', ''[[Buffalo Evening News]]'', ''The Critic'', ''[[Hartford Courant]]'', ''[[New York Evening Post]]'', ''[[New York Herald]]'', ''[[New York Press (historical)|New York Press]]'', ''[[The Sun (New York)|New York Sun]]'', ''[[New York Times]]'', ''[[New York Tribune]]'', Smith College alumnae publications, and the ''[[Springfield Republican]]''. An exhibition of her work with biographical material published runsran throughfrom JanOct. 25,2014 to Jan. 2015, at the [[Florence Griswold Museum]] in Old Lyme, Connecticut. A [https://www.hfsbooks.com/books/forever-seeing-new-beauties-kahn/ biography] of her has been written by the journalist Eve M. Kahn for Wesleyan University Press.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Forever Seeing New Beauties: The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams, 1857-1907|last=Kahn|first=Eve|publisher=Wesleyan University Press|year=2019|isbn=9780819578747|location=Middletown, CT}}</ref>

#Champney, Elizabeth Williams (1894). "[https://www.jstor.org/stable/25581862 Woman in Art]," in ''Quarterly Illustrator'', vol. 2, No. 6, April–June 1894, pp. 111–124.

#Merrill, Linda (1990). An Ideal Country: Paintings by Dwight William Tryon in the Freer Gallery of Art. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. {{ISBN |0-87451-538-6}}.

[[Category:American19th-century womenAmerican painters]]