Cecilia Beaux Letters

Special Collections, Boston Athenæum

Reference Department

Boston Athenæum

10 ½ Beacon Street

Boston, Massachusetts 02108

617.227.0270

Appointment Form

Processed by:					Stephen Nonack
Encoded by:					Lisa Starzyk-Weldon, September 2001.

© 2003 Boston Athenæum.

Descriptive Summary:

	Beaux, Cecilia, 1855-1942.
	Boston Athenaeum. Reference Department.
	Letters written to Leonora Howe (Mrs. William Stone Booth), mainly from the artist's home in Gloucester, reveal domestic and professional aspects of her life. Photographs in the collection are of Cecilia Beaux portraits of Mrs. Albion Parris Howe (1902, 1903). Four miscellaneous letters to Leonora Howe included here are from T.W. Higginson, Denman W. Ross, Edward R. Warren and Alice Meynell.

Acquisition Information:

Mss. L328
Gift of Miss Elizabeth McPherson-Booth, June 1973.

Arrangement:

The collection is arranged in three series. Series I. is comprised of letters from Cecilia Beaux to Leonora Howe, Series II. is comprised of letters written to Leonora Howe from other correspodents, and Series III. is comprised of one folder of photographs. The letters are arranged within each series chronologically.

Related Materials:

Papers of Cecilia Beaux are also housed in the archives of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Illinois State Historical Library and the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute.

Biographical Note:

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 1, 1855, Eliza Cecilia Beaux, as she was christened, was left by her widowed father to be reared by relatives in New York City and later West Philadelphia. She was educated at home and for two years at a Philadelphia finishing school and at 16 took up the study of art. Under the tutelage of her cousin, Catharine Drinker Janvier, an artist and writer of some note, and later of Adolf van der Whelen and William Sartain, she developed rapidly into a skilled painter. In 1883 she opened a studio in Philadelphia. Her first major work, a full-length portrait of her sister and nephew, was exhibited in 1885 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and in 1886, under the title "Les Derniers Jours d'Enfance," at the Paris Salon. During 1888-89 she traveled and studied in Europe, taking instruction at the Academie Julian in Paris and from several leading artists.

Returning to her Philadelphia studio, Beaux achieved considerable success over the next several years. In 1896 she exhibited six portraits at the Paris Salon--"Rev. Matthew B. Grier," "Ernesta Drinker, with Nurse," "A Lady from Connecticut," "Sita and Sarita," "Cynthia Sherwood," and "The Dreamer." In 1894 she was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design, and she was elevated to full academician in 1902. In 1895 she became the first woman instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and in 1896, on the strength of her showing at the Paris Salon, she was elected to membership in the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.

Cecilia Beaux moved to New York City in 1900. Her later major works included commissioned portraits of Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt and her daughter Ethel, Mary Adelaide Nutting (for the Johns Hopkins Hospital), Mrs. Andrew Carnegie, Richard Watson Gilder, and, for the National Art Committee's project on World War I leaders, Admiral Lord David Beatty, Georges Clémenceau, and Cardinal Mercier. Acknowledged as one of the leading portraitists of her day, Beaux was influenced by some of her French Impressionist teachers and also by John Singer Sargent, but her work was not imitative of any master. Following an injury in 1924 she painted little. In 1930 she published an autobiography entitled Background with Figures. She was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1933, and two years later the Academy presented a retrospective exhibit of some 65 of her canvases. She died at her summer home in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on September 17, 1942.

Scope and Content Note:

Letters written to Leonora Howe (Mrs. William Stone Booth), mainly from the artist's home in Gloucester, reveal domestic and professional aspects of her life. Photographs in the collection are Cecilia Beaux portraits of Mrs. Albion Parris Howe (1902, 1903). Four miscellaneous letters to Leonora Howe included here are from T.W. Higginson, Denman W. Ross, Edward R. Warren and Alice Meynell.

Local Subject Headings

Booth, Leonora Howe.

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 1823-1911.

Meynell, Alice Christiana Thompson, d 1847-1922.

Artists--Correspondence.

Item Notes and Descriptions