Research Collections > Collections Online > Cecilia Beaux papers > About this Collection

Notice anything different? We've made some updates to our site. Send questions or comments to website feedback.

Image for Series 1: Biographical Materials, circa 1893-1943

This collection has been digitized: View Collection

About the Cecilia Beaux papers

All information on this page comes from A Finding Aid to the Cecilia Beaux Papers, 1863-1968, in the Archives of American Art by Megan McShea, in the Archives of American Art. (Printable Version of Finding Aid: PDF, 93 KB )

Biographical Information | Description of the Collection | How to Use the Collection

Biographical Information [+]

Cecilia Beaux was born in Philadelphia in 1855. Her mother died just days after her birth, and Beaux and her sister went to live with their grandmother and aunts. Her adoptive family exposed her to fine art throughout her childhood and, once in school, Beaux excelled in her drawing classes and began training in the studio of Catherine A. Drinker, an artist and a cousin of her uncle Will Biddle. From 1881-1883 she attended life classes directed by William Sartain, who traveled to Philadelphia from New York to give criticisms. She also counted the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts master Thomas Eakins among her early influences, though she did not receive direct instruction from him. READ MORE

Her first major success in painting was a double-portrait of her sister and nephew entitled Les Derniers Jours d'Enfance, exhibited first at the American Art Association, and in 1885 at the Pennsylvania Academy, where it won the Mary Smith Prize, the first of many prizes Beaux received during her lifetime. In 1887, the painting was exhibited at the Paris salon to critical acclaim. Beaux's reputation as a Philadelphia portraitist grew steadily with the execution of several portraits her in Chestnut Street studio, and in 1888 she traveled to Europe to continue her studio education.

In Paris, she joined the Academie Julien, where she received criticisms from Tony Robert Fleury and William Adolph Bougereau. She spent the summer in Concarneau, Brittany, where Alexander Harrison and Charles Lazar critiqued her work, and returned to Paris, where she attended the Academie Colarossi under and sought out private criticisms in the atelier of Benjamin Constant. She copied paintings and classical sculpture at the Louvre, and traveled throughout Europe to view the works of old masters. In England, she painted several portraits of her friends, the Darwins, before returning to Philadelphia in August of 1889. She traveled to Europe several more times in her life, including a trip in 1896 to see six of her paintings exhibited at the Salon de Champs de Mars. At the time this was an unprecedented number of paintings shown there by an American, and their strength earned her a membership in the Societé Nationale des Beaux-Arts.

In the 1890s, Beaux earned a living painting commissioned portraits at her Philadelphia studio, while experimenting with and refining her style and technique with portraits of friends and family such as Sita and Sarita, of her cousin Sarah Leavitt with her cat, The Dreamer, of her friend Caroline Smith, and Ernesta with Nurse, of her niece, who was a favorite sitter of Beaux's throughout her life. Beaux became the first full-time female faculty member at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1895, and continued teaching there until 1915.

In the late 1890s, Beaux painted several works for which she would be repeatedly honored, including Mother and Daughter, a double-portrait of Mrs. Clement A. Griscom and her daughter Frances, which won four gold medals at international exhibitions, and The Dancing Lesson, a double-portrait of Dorothea and Francesca Gilder, the daughters of Richard Watson Gilder, editor of Century Magazine and himself a devoted friend and supporter of Beaux. The Gilders, and especially Dorothea, were steady companions as well as sitters for Beaux throughout her adult life. In 1901 and 1902, Beaux painted Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt and her daughter Ethel in the White House, and in 1903, she was elected to the National Academy of Design.

By 1905 Beaux was living and working primarily in New York during the winter, and at "Green Alley," a home she built in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in the summer. She was introduced to Gloucester by her friend, the Harvard economist A. Piatt Andrew, and entertained a steady stream of intellectual, literary, and artistic friends such as Isabella Stuart Gardner, William James, and Thornton Oakley. Beaux continued to amass prizes and honors for her artwork, including an honorary doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania in 1908. She had solo exhibitions at Macbeth Gallery in 1910, the Corcoran Gallery in 1912, and M. Knoedler Gallery in 1915 and 1917. She had regular public speaking appearances, published articles, and interviews on such subjects as art education, women in art, and modernist art, the pervasive influence of which she eschewed as a passing fad.

In 1919, she traveled to war-torn Europe as the official portraitist of the United States War Portraits Commission painted the portraits of three European war heroes: Cardinal Mercier, Admiral Beatty, and Georges Clemenceau. In 1924, she broke her hip in Paris, and although she continued to paint, she would never again be the prolific painter of her earlier years due to the injury. She wrote her autobiography Background with Figures in 1930, and in 1935-1936, the American Academy of Arts and Letters held the largest exhibition of her work that was mounted during her lifetime. Beaux died in 1942 in Gloucester, at the age of 87. HIDE

Return to top

Description of the Collection

Overview - Scope and Contents [+]

The papers of the painter Cecilia Beaux measure 3.3 linear feet and date from 1863 to 1968. READ MORE

Arrangement and Series Description

The collection is arranged into 6 series, with multiple subseries in Series 2:

Return to top

Subjects

This collection is indexed in the online catalog of the Archives of American Art under the following terms:

Subjects-Topical:
- Painting
- Art -- Study and teaching
- Art -- Economic aspects
- Women painters -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia

Types of Materials:
- Photographs
- Diaries
- Poems

Names:
- Andrew, A. Piatt (Abram Piatt)

Provenance

The bulk of the collection was donated by Beaux's neice, Catherine Drinker Bowen in 1970. A portion of the papers were donated by Harrison Cultra in 1971. Helen Wheelwright, wife of the artist Paul Feeley and a friend of Beaux's, donated Beaux's palette to the Archives in 1972. Cecilia D. Saltonstall, great-neice of Cecilia Beaux, donated several of Beaux's certificates and diplomas to the Archives via the National Portrait Gallery in 1995.

Return to top

How the Collection was Processed

Papers were donated in four separate accessions between 1970 and 1995 and partially microfilmed on reels 426-429 and 1369. At this time, nitrate negatives in the collection were printed and copy negatives made. Loaned materials that were later donated were microfilmed on reels N/68-48 - N/68-49. All accretions were integrated, re-processed, and described in a finding aid by Megan McShea in 2006 and scanned in 2007 with funding provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Return to top

Index(es)

Adeline Adams: 1937
Andrew, A. Piatt: undated
Arliss, George: 1913, 1915, 1917, 1924
Beatty, John M.: 1897
Bellows, George: 1909
Bentley, Elizabeth K.: 1927, 1935
Berenson, Bernard: 1919
Beveridge, Albert J.: 1916-1917
Biddle, Emily: 1908
Billings, J.S.: 1897
Black, Olive (Association of Women Painters and Sculptors): undated
Blake, Anne D.: undated
Boutet de Monvel, Bernard: 1926-1927, 1931, undated
Burroughs, Bryson: 1915
Butler, Howard Russell: 1931
Butterworth, Olive: undated
Cabot, Richard: 1899, undated
Caldwell, John: 1899
Cauldwell, John B.: 1899-1900
Chase, William Merritt: 1890
Coates, Edward H.: 1898, 1908
Colt, Anna: 1898
Cooper, Colin Campbell: 1931
Cortissoz, Royal: 1930 and undated
Curtis, Elizabeth: undated
Cushing, Frank Hamilton: 1897
Damrosch, Walter: 1933
Dana, Charles E.: undated
Darwin, Maud: 1931
De Forest, Robert: 1919, 1931, undated
Derby, Ethel: undated
Elliot, Maud: undated
Fairchild, Charles S.: 1905
Farley, Richard Blossom: 1898
Fedele (Italian Ambassador): 1925-1926
Finley, John Huston: 1933, 1935
Fisher, Bessie and George: 1898
Freeman, Marion (Art Students League): 1924
Gardner, Isabella Stewart: 1912
Gibran, Kahlil: 1917
Gibson, Charles Dana: 1934
Gilbert, Cass: 1931
Gilder, Richard Watson: 1894-1908
Groff, F.: undated
Harrison, Charles: 1908
Hooker, D.R.: 1909
Huntington, Margaret: undated
Huntington, W.R.: 1899
Irwin, Agnes: 1903
Ives, Halsey: 1904
James, Henry: 1911
James, William: undated
Johnson, Robert Underwood: 1925, 1933
Kelly, Edmond: undated
Kent, Rockwell: 1926
Knoedler, Roland F.: 1916
La Farge, John: undated
Lambert, Macarter: 1899
Landowska, Wanda: undated
Laughlin, James Laurence: 1899
M. Knoedler and Co.: 1917
MacBeth, Robert: 1922
MacMonnies, Frederick William: 1936
Marshall, Henry: 1898, undated
Mather, Frank Jewett: 1931
McCarter, Henry: 1896, undated
McFadden, Adele Lewis: undated
McGuire, F.B.: 1911-1912
Mechlin, Leila: 1912
Miller, George Douglas: 1899
Minnigerode, C. Powell: 1912, 1925, 1926
Mitchell, Silas Weir: 1900
Morris, Harrison: 1895, 1899, 1904, 1930, 1931 (see also Scrapbook, Series 5)
Moss, Charles A.: 1905
Nicoll, J.C.: 1893 (see also Scrapbook, Series 5)
Oakley, Thornton: 1930-1931, undated
Olmsted, Anna Wetherill: 1931
Parrish, Maxfield: 1909
Parrish, Stephen: 1891
Pell, John: 1931
Pennell, Joseph: 1907-1908, 1912, 1915
Pepper, William: 1896
Perkins, John Forbes: 1905, undated
Perry, Bliss: 1907
Perry, Walter S.: 1896
Putnam, A. James: undated
Rainsford, W.S.: 1894
Raymond, Mabel: undated
Renselear, M.G. van: undated
Richardson, William H.: 1898
Rombauer, Martin: undated
Roosevelt, Edith: 1930
Roosevelt, Theodore: 1904
St. Gaudens, Augustus: 1896
St. Gaudens, Homer: 1930
Sargent, John Singer: 1903, undated
Schofield, Henry: 1908
Sedgewick, Alice G.: 1909, undated
Seymour, George Dudley: 1898, 1906, undated
Sharpless, Isaac: 1903
Shelton, Jane de Forest: undated
Skinner, Otis: undated
Soare, William: 1931
Tarbell, Ida M.: 1939
Taylor, Henry Osborn: 1939
Thaw, Florence: 1899
Thayer, Abbott H.: 1912, undated
Thomas, Isaac: undated
Thomas, Martha Carey: 1908
Thomas, Paul K.M.: 1899, undated
Turner, Eliza: 1897
Van Dyke, Henry: 1899
Vanamee, Grace (American Academy of Arts and Letters): 1933-1935
Wainwright, Evelyn: undated
Wainwright, Richard: 1898
Wanamaker, Thomas: 1899
Watrous, Harry W.: 1902-1903
White, Henry: 1919
Wilder, Thornton: 1928
Wister, Sarah B.: undated

Return to top

How to Use the Collection

Restrictions on Use

The Cecilia Beaux papers are owned by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Literary rights as possessed by the donor have been dedicated to public use for research, study, and scholarship. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.

The collection has been digitized and is available online via AAA's website.

Available Formats

This collection has been digitized. View the Cecilia Beaux papers online

The bulk of the collection has been digitized and is available online via the Archives of American Art website. Photographs of works of art have not been digitized.

Related Collections

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts holds additional papers related to Cecilia Beaux, particularly personal photographs. Portions of these papers were loaned to the Archives of American Art for microfilming in 1985 and were microfilmed on reel 3658.

The Archives of American Art also holds the Dorothea Gilder papers regarding Cecilia Beaux.

Separated Materials

A sketchbook of Beaux's was loaned by Jeffrey R. Brown Fine Arts of Boston in 1985 and is available on microfilm reel 3425.

How to Cite this Collection

Cecilia Beaux papers, 1863-1968. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Return to top

Time	Category	Message	Count
0ms	Fusebox	Including fusebox.init.cfm	1
0ms	Fusebox	Compiling requested fuseaction 'Main.OverView'	1
0ms	Fusebox	Including parsed file for 'Main.OverView'	1
1563ms	Fusebox	Request completed	1

About the Cecilia Beaux papers

Biographical Information [+]

Description of the Collection

Overview - Scope and Contents [+]

Arrangement and Series Description

Subjects

Provenance

How the Collection was Processed

Index(es)

How to Use the Collection

Restrictions on Use

Available Formats

Related Collections

Separated Materials

How to Cite this Collection

Fusebox debugging: