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ELLEN EMMET Dorothea
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Ellen Emmet was from an extended family of talented female artists that included, Rosina Emmet Sherwood, Lydia Field Emmet, Jane Emmet de Glenhn and Edith Leslie Emmet. Of all these cousins, Ellen was the most gifted. She commenced serious art studies with Dennis Miller Bunker in Boston at age twelve. Two years later she was taking lessons at the Art Students League in New York City and by the age of seventeen, she was participating in William Merritt Chase's Shinnecock Summer Art School. The exposure she received that summer lead to a job as an illustrator at Vogue Magazine the following year. Determined to become a society portrait painter, Emmet left for Paris in 1897 to work in William MacMonnies's atelier. She remained there for three years, interspersed with portrait painting trips to England. After winning a bronze medal at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, Ellen left the continent to set up her studio in New York, the floor below Mary Cassat's. Introductions from her mentors, Charles McKim and Stanford White, launched her career as a portrait painter. Her society portraits were well received and a 1902 show at Durand-Ruel established her reputation. In 1906, Emmet had her second one-woman show at Boston's Copley Hall. She continued to exhibit throughout her career at venues such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Academy of Design and the Pan-Pacific Exposition. In 1911, Ellen Emmet married William Blanchard Rand who was 11 years her junior. She had three boys in three years and lived in Salisbury, Connecticut. Determined to continue her career, Ellen Emmet Rand kept painting and exhibiting. By the end of her life she had painted over 800 portraits, many of them leading figures in America, including Henry James and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. |
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Ivan Le Lorraine Albright Robert Salmon |
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