Adele Williams
Adele Williams (February 24, 1868 – 1952) was an American artist who was one of the earliest Impressionist painters in Virginia.[1]
Adele Williams | |
---|---|
Born | Richmond, Virginia, U.S. | February 24, 1868
Died | 1952 (aged 83–84) |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Cooper Union Art Students League of New York Académie Julian |
Known for | Painting |
Movement | Impressionism |
Biography
Adele Williams was born in Richmond, Virginia, the daughter of John H. Williams.[2] Graduating high school at the age of 15, she went to New York in 1886 to study at the Woman's Art School of Cooper Union and the Art Students' League.[2] She also studied at the Académie Julian in Paris, where she won the Prix Concours medal.[3]
Williams worked in oil, watercolor, pastel, and mezzotint, painting landscapes, still lifes, and harbor and street scenes in an Impressionist style. She exhibited work at the Paris Salon[3] during her stay in France, and after her return to the United States she showed at the American Watercolor Society, the Art Club of Philadelphia, and elsewhere.[2] A number of her portraits are cataloged by the Catalogue of American Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, including a 1902 self-portrait and a 1903 portrait of Ellen Axson Wilson, the first wife of President Woodrow Wilson.[4] Her portrait of judge John W. Riely hangs in the Virginia Supreme Court,[5] and her portrait of Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury is owned by the University of Virginia.[6]
References
- Kelly, James C., et al. The Virginia Landscape: A Cultural History. HOwell Press, 2000.
- Willard, Frances E., and Mary A. Livermore, eds. A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-Seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life. Moulton, 1893.
- Bayliss, Mary Lynn. The Dooleys of Richmond: An Irish Immigrant Family in the Old and New South. By Mary Lynn Bayliss
- "Adele Williams". National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
- Virginia State Library Publications, no. 43, p. 102.
- Patton, John Shelton, et al., eds. Jefferson's University: Glimpses of the Past and Present of the University, p. 39.