Overview

Revolutionary artist Mary Rogers Williams (1857 1907), baker's daughter from Hartford, Connecticut, biked and hiked from the Arctic Circle to Naples, exhibited from Paris to Indianapolis, trained at the Art Students League, chafed against art world rules that favored men, wrote thousands of pages about her travels and work, taught at Smith College for nearly two decades, but sadly ended up almost totally obscure. In 2012, her confessional letters and hundreds of her paintings and sketches turned up in storage at a Connecticut family's home. Her first biography reveals her as feisty, funny, self-deprecating, caustically critical of mainstream art, and observant of everything from soldiers' epaulettes to colorful produce layered on delivery trucks. She was determined to paint portraits and landscapes in her distinctive style. The book reproduces her unpublished artworks.

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9780819578747

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Reviews

Eve Kahn evocatively reconstructs Impressionist painter Mary Rogers Williams' life in a jaunty style fitting her upbeat, globe-trekking, paintbrush-wielding subject. A rare woman's perspective on 19th century cosmopolitan life, it's a must-read. --Katherine Manthorne, art historian, CUNY Graduate Center From a forgotten box of letters Eve Kahn meticulously stiches together the life, travels, work, opinions, humor and travails of Mary Rogers Williams. Kahn's zealous detective work begs the question, how many other women, erased to history, await discovery? --Marcia Ely, Executive Vice President, Brooklyn Historical Society Two decades before Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, Mary Rogers Williams wrestled with the indignities of life as a professional woman artist. Subject to the sexism of her age, she nonetheless honed an original approach to her art, building a life around her passion for travel, friends, her sisters, and her refusal to forfeit her independent views. Eve Kahn immerses us in Williams's pictures and thoughts, at long last bringing this vivid woman the attention she deserves. --Amy Kurtz Lansing, Curator, Florence Griswold Museum Eve Kahn has created a vivid portrait of an artist who was too self-effacing to paint one of herself. Grounded in New England pastoralism, European decadence, art salon politicking and misogynistic backstabbing, the story of Mary Rogers Williams is one of significant toughness. --Julie Lasky, journalist, author, and critic

Eve Kahn evocatively reconstructs Impressionist painter Mary Rogers Williams' life in a jaunty style fitting her upbeat, globe-trekking, paintbrush-wielding subject. A rare woman's perspective on 19th century cosmopolitan life, its a must-read. --Katherine Manthorne, art historian, CUNY Graduate Center From a forgotten box of letters Eve Kahn meticulously stiches together the life, travels, work, opinions, humor and travails of Mary Rogers Williams. Kahn's zealous detective work begs the question, how many other women, erased to history, await discovery? --Marcia Ely, Executive Vice President, Brooklyn Historical Society Two decades before Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, Mary Rogers Williams wrestled with the indignities of life as a professional woman artist. Subject to the sexism of her age, she nonetheless honed an original approach to her art, building a life around her passion for travel, friends, her sisters, and her refusal to forfeit her independent views. Eve Kahn immerses us in Williams's pictures and thoughts, at long last bringing this vivid woman the attention she deserves. --Amy Kurtz Lansing, Curator, Florence Griswold Museum Eve Kahn has created a vivid portrait of an artist who was too self-effacing to paint one of herself. Grounded in New England pastoralism, European decadence, art salon politicking and misogynistic backstabbing, the story of Mary Rogers Williams is one of significant toughness. --Julie Lasky, journalist, author, and critic

Author Information

Eve M. Kahn is an independent scholar specializing in art and architectural history, design and preservation, and was weekly Antiques columnist at The New York Times, 2008 2016. She contributes regularly to the Times, The Magazine Antiques, Apollo and Atlas Obscura.

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