Mary Elizabeth Price
Template:Infobox artist Mary Elizabeth Price (March 1, 1877 – February 19, 1965),<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> also known as M. Elizabeth Price, was an American Impressionist painter. She was an early member of the Philadelphia Ten, organizing several of the group's exhibitions. She steadily exhibited her works with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the National Academy of Design, and other organizations over the course of her career. She was one of the several family members who entered the field of art as artists, dealers, or framemakers.
Early lifeEdit
Mary Elizabeth Price was born in 1877 in Martinsburg, West Virginia.<ref name="Michener bio">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Her parents were Quakers Reuben Moore and Caroline Cooper Paxson Price who lived in Shenandoah, Virginia. Price spent her childhood in Virginia, West Virginia, and then most of her childhood in Solebury Township, north of New Hope where her mother was born.<ref name="Peterson p. 194">Template:Cite book</ref> She had a sister, Alice, and three brothers, Frederick Newlin, Rueben Moore, and Carroll Price.<ref name="Peterson p. 194" /><ref name="Michener" /> M. Elizabeth Price graduated from the Friends' Central School.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
EducationEdit
Price studied from about 1896 to 1904 at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art and from about 1904 to 1907 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Hugh Breckenridge and Daniel Garber. She took private lessons from William Langson Lathrop.<ref name="Peterson p. 194" /><ref name="Folk" />
CareerEdit
InstructorEdit
Price was in New York in 1917 when she taught art to children who attended public schools at the Neighborhood Art School of Greenwich House. The program was funded by Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney to teach children painting, drawing, pottery, wood carving, and sculpting. In the winter of 1919–1920, Price exhibited the children's work, as part of an art education campaign with other schools, at the suggestion of Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh.<ref name=AFA>Template:Cite journal</ref>
WorksEdit
Inspired by the painters from Siena and Florence during the Italian Renaissance,<ref name=AFA /> Price is best known for her floral still life paintings which used gold and silver leaf.<ref name="Lambertville Record" /> Her works were created by first applying red clay and gesso to wooden panels. Metal leaf was added and then oils painted on the panels of figures or flowers. She created large gilded panels with this technique.<ref name="Michener Panels">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> "Her work combines a Sienese delicacy of line with a modern freedom in the use of color," wrote a New York Times critic.<ref name=AFA /><ref name="Lambertville Record">Template:Cite news</ref> Examples of such work, including Mallows (1929)<ref name="Michener">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and Delphinium Pattern (ca. 1933), were included in The Painterly Voice: Bucks County's Fertile Ground, a 2011 exhibition of the James A. Michener Art Museum. She also painted landscapes, genre scenes, and ships, including a unique series of Spanish treasure ships.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> One of her floral paintings, made Template:Circa of a Marsh Mallow, was appraised at $40,000 to $60,000 by Robin Starr on the PBS Antiques Roadshow in 2011.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
She created murals of 18th and 19th-century needlework samplers in 1931 with Lucille Howard, who she shared a studio and was also a member of the Philadelphia Ten. The murals were made for the clubhouse of the American Woman's Association in New York at 353 West 57th Street.<ref name=AFA /> A still life painting of fruit is owned by Smith College and was hung in the Jordan House in 1922.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
ExhibitionsEdit
She exhibited her works in 1914 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and in Washington, D.C. at the Corcoran Gallery of Art Biennial. She continued to exhibit at the Pennsylvania Academy annually for most years between 1917 and 1943.<ref name="Michener bio" /><ref name="Peterson p. 194" /> Between 1921 and 1934, Price exhibited 16 times at the National Academy of Design, where in 1927 she won the Carnegie Prize for best oil painting by an American artist,<ref name="Michener bio" /><ref name="Peterson p. 194" /> for her depiction of sixteenth-century Spanish galleons.<ref name=AFA /> Her work was exhibited in the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors' Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition 1889–1939 in New York.<ref name="Heller" /> She also exhibited at several other venues in the United States over her career.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
MembershipEdit
As an early member of the Philadelphia Ten, a group of women artists begun in 1921, she organized exhibits and participated in solo and group shows in many galleries in New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., including Grand Central Art Galleries, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the National Academy of Design.<ref name="Folk" /> Between 1920 and 1927,<ref name=AFA /> Price was the chair of the exhibition committee for the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors and arranged 32 exhibitions across America, and in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro.<ref name="Folk">Template:Cite book</ref> She was also a member of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts fellowship, American Woman's Association, American Artists Professional League, the Art Alliance of Philadelphia, Allied Artists of America, Fine Arts Society of Arkansas,<ref name="Heller">Template:Cite book</ref> Phillips Mill Community Art Association, and The Plastic Club.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Price familyEdit
One of Price's brothers, Frederick,<ref name="Ferargil" /> generally known as F. Newlin Price, owned the Ferargil Gallery in New York. It sold many Impressionist artists paintings, including those from Pennsylvania, from 1914<ref name="Peterson p. 194" /> to 1955.<ref name="Ferargil">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Her sister, Alice, was an artist and brother R. Moore Price was an artist,<ref name="Michener" /> framemaker, and art dealer. His wife, Elizabeth Freedley Price, was an Impressionist painter.<ref name="Peterson p. 194" /> Her sister married Rae Sloan Bredin, another American impressionist painter living in New Hope, Pennsylvania.<ref name="Michener" /> Her brother, Reuben Moore Price, was a member of the Bucks County arts and crafts frame making movement.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Carroll, and his wife Edith, remained on the Solebury Township family farm.<ref name="Peterson p. 194" />
New Hope, PennsylvaniaEdit
Price lived much of her early artistic life in New York City and then returned to Bucks County in New Hope, Pennsylvania<ref name="Ferargil" /> in late the 1920s. She lived in Pumpkin Seed, an old yellow stone cottage, named for its size and color.<ref name="Michener E&C">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The cottage, situated along a canal, had been rented by F. Newlin for several years. M. Elizabeth Price said of it, "When I first saw the original cottage it was painted such a vivid yellow that I instinctively thought of a pumpkin; and it was so small that I named it Pumpkin Seed more in derision than anything else. But the quaintness of the name grew on us so that we've learned to love it." She grew a garden of irises, mallows, peonies, lilies, delphiniums, poppies, hollyhocks, and gladioli that she used as subjects for her paintings. She lived there for the rest of her life<ref name=AFA /> with her brother,<ref name="Ferargil" /> who owned a house, farm, and property in the New Hope area. She gave lectures to the New Hope Women's Club, where she showed her paintings and encouraged local artists.<ref name="Michener E&C" />
DeathEdit
Mary Elizabeth Price died in Trenton, New Jersey on February 19, 1965<ref name="Michener bio" /> at Mercer Hospital.<ref name=AFA /> At the time of her death, she was a member of the Solebury Friends Meeting and, at the age of 87, had been the last living of the Price children. She was survived by her nieces and nephews.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Price is buried in the Solebury Friends Meeting House cemetery.
Her papers are archived at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery Library.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Selected worksEdit
- Bathing Along the Delaware River, private collection<ref name="TFolk">Template:Cite book</ref>
- By the Laita, Quimperle, France, by 1921<ref name="Ferargil 1921" />
- Bouquet<ref name="Peterson p. 337" />
- Butterfly Weed No. 1, by 1929<ref name="Exhibition 1929" />
- Cheerful Barge, oil on canvas, by 1929, private collection<ref name="Exhibition 1929" /><ref name="Peterson p. 199" />
- Delphinium and Black Pinks, by 1929<ref name="Exhibition 1929" />
- Doorway to the Vineyard, Palazzo Afflitto, Italy, by 1921<ref name="Ferargil 1921" />
- The Fountain, Ravello, Italy, by 1921<ref name="Ferargil 1921" />
- Freight Boats, Menaggio, Italy, by 1921<ref name="Ferargil 1921" />
- Gladioli and Japanese Iris<ref name="Peterson p. 337" />
- House on the Hill, Quimperle, France, by 1921<ref name="Ferargil 1921" />
- House of Jeanne, Quimperle, France, by 1921<ref name="Ferargil 1921" />
- Ladies of the Villa d'Este<ref name="Peterson p. 337" />
- Lavandieres, Quimperle, France, by 1921<ref name="Ferargil 1921" />
- Market Day in Guingamp, France, by 1921<ref name="Ferargil 1921" />
- The McGill Farm above New Hope, watercolor, private collection<ref name="Freemans">Template:Citation</ref>
- No. 1 Fuchsia, by 1929<ref name="Exhibition 1929" />
- Picking Potatoes, oil on canvas, ca. 1933, private collection<ref name="Peterson p. 199">Template:Cite book</ref>
- Sabot Market, Guingamp, France, by 1921<ref name="Ferargil 1921" />
- Saint Aignan, Pig Market, France, by 1921<ref name="Ferargil 1921" />
- Southern Magnolia, private collection<ref name="TFolk" />
- Valley of the Delaware, oil on canvas, private collection<ref name="Freemans" />
- Vase with White Poppies, James A Michener Museum, Doyleston, Pennsylvania<ref name="Michener Career" />
- A Villa on Lake Como, Italy, by 1921<ref name="Ferargil 1921" />
- Village Queen, by 1929<ref name="Exhibition 1929" />
- The Well Diggers, by 1929<ref name="Exhibition 1929">Template:Citation</ref>
- Wine Shop, Quimperle, France, by 1921, James A Michener Museum, Doyleston, Pennsylvania<ref name="Ferargil 1921">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Michener Career">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref>
- The Yacht Race<ref name="Peterson p. 337">Template:Cite book</ref>
ReferencesEdit
Further readingEdit
External linksEdit
- Museo virtuale della città di Tivoli [1]