Adelia Armstrong Lutz (; June 25, 1859 – November 17, 1931) was an American artist active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She organized art circles in

Knoxville, Tennessee Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division and the state' ...

, as director of the Knoxville Art Club and as a co-organizer of the Nicholson Art League. Her still lifes and portraits were exhibited throughout the American South, and they are to be the subject of a permanent exhibit at her former home, Historic Westwood. Lutz's home in Knoxville, Westwood, has been listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

Life

Lutz was born Adelia Ann Armstrong at the home of her maternal grandparents in

Jefferson County, Tennessee Jefferson County is an exurban county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 54,683. Its county seat is Dandridge. Jefferson County is part of the Morristown Metropolitan Statistical Area with neigh ...

.Kim Trent
Rezoning Application for Westwood
Knoxville-Knox County Metropolitan Planning Commission, 6 June 2013. She was the daughter of Robert and Louise (Franklin) Armstrong, and granddaughter of Drury Armstrong, an early Knoxville landowner whose house, Crescent Bend, still stands on

Kingston Pike Kingston Pike is a highway in Knox County, Tennessee, United States, that connects Downtown Knoxville with West Knoxville, Farragut, and other communities in the western part of the county. The road follows a merged stretch of U.S. Route 1 ...

. She spent her childhood in the antebellum mansion built by her father,

Bleak House ''Bleak House'' is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and ...

. Lutz was a sister-in-law of novelist

Anne W. Armstrong Anne Wetzell Armstrong (September 20, 1872 – March 17, 1958) was an American novelist and businesswoman, active primarily in the first half of the 20th century. She is best known for her novel, ''This Day and Time'', an account of life in a ...

(1872–1958), who married Lutz's brother, Robert Franklin Armstrong, in 1905. Lutz attended the East Tennessee Female Institute in Knoxville in the early 1870s, where she was a classmate of future Knoxville philanthropist

Mary Boyce Temple Mary Boyce Temple (July 6, 1856 – May 16, 1929) was an American philanthropist and socialite, active primarily in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was the first president of the Ossoli Circle, the oldes ...

. She later attended the Southern Home School in

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

and Augusta Seminary (

Mary Baldwin College Mary Baldwin University (MBU, formerly Mary Baldwin College) is a private university in Staunton, Virginia. It was founded in 1842 as Augusta Female Seminary. Today, Mary Baldwin University is home to the Mary Baldwin College for Women, a resid ...

) in Staunton, Virginia.Frances Elizabeth Willard and Mary Ashton Rice Livermore,
Adelia Armstrong Lutz
" ''A Woman of the Century'' (Moulton, 1893), pp. 478-479. She continued her art training at the

Corcoran Gallery The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Desi ...

in Washington, D.C., and the

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

in Philadelphia. During this period, she toured Europe. Adelia-armstrong-lutz-by-mccrary1

After returning to Knoxville, Lutz taught painting out of a studio located in the Kern Building on Market Square. She married entrepreneur John Edwin Lutz (1854–1920) in a large ceremony at Knoxville's Second Presbyterian Church on February 10, 1886. Their home, Westwood, which stands on land given to Lutz by her father, was completed in 1890. The house's design incorporated a studio and gallery for Lutz, which she would often open to visitors in subsequent years. The Lutzes had two children, Louise Lutz Holloway and Edwin Rowland Lutz. Lutz was a director of the Knoxville Art Club and an inaugural member of its successor, the Nicholson Art League. This League included among its members painters

Lloyd Branson Enoch Lloyd Branson (1853–1925) was an American artist best known for his portraits of Southern politicians and depictions of early East Tennessee history. One of the most influential figures in Knoxville's early art circles, Branson rec ...

Catherine Wiley Anna Catherine Wiley (January 18, 1879 – May 16, 1958) was an American artist active primarily in the early twentieth century. After training with the Art Students League of New York and receiving instruction from artists such as Lloyd Bran ...

, and Charles Krutch, photographer

Joseph Knaffl Joseph Knaffl (October 9, 1861 – March 23, 1938) was an American art and portrait photographer, active in Knoxville, Tennessee, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known for his 1899 portrait, "Knaffl Madonna," which has be ...

, and architect

George Franklin Barber George Franklin Barber (July 31, 1854 – February 17, 1915) was an American architect known for the house designs he marketed worldwide through mail-order catalogs. Barber was one of the most successful residential architects of the late Vi ...

. Lutz posed for one of Branson's earliest portraits in 1878,James C. Kelly, "Portrait Painting in Tennessee," ''Tennessee Historical Quarterly'', Vol. 46, No. 4 (Winter 1987), p. 203-204. and her studio was photographed by his partner, Frank B. McCrary, in the late 1880s. Lutz's painting, "Motherless," was exhibited at the

Tennessee Centennial Exposition The Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition was an exposition held in Nashville from May 1 – October 31, 1897 in what is now Centennial Park. A year late, it celebrated the 100th anniversary of Tennessee's entry into the union in 17 ...

in Nashville in 1897,James Hoobler, "Adelia Armstrong Lutz", ''Tennessee Historical Quarterly'', Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2002), p. 15-16. and she and several other Nicholson members exhibited work at a Richmond Art Club exposition in Virginia in 1902. Lutz helped organize the art displays at the Appalachian expositions of 1910 and 1911, and she was on the Executive Board of the Art Department for the National Conservation Exposition in 1913. Lutz continued painting until her death in 1931. She was initially buried in Knoxville's New Gray Cemetery, but was later reinterred at Highland Memorial Cemetery off Kingston Pike. Lutz's home, Westwood, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Her granddaughter, Cecil Holloway Matheny, resided at the house until her death in 2009 at the age of 97.Jack Neely,
Aslan Foundation Acquires a Kingston Pike Landmark
" ''Metro Pulse'', 30 May 2012. Retrieved: 6 April 2014. Lutz's studio within the house remains much as Lutz left it, and at the time of Matheny's death still contained some of Lutz's unfinished paintings.

Works

While Lutz occasionally painted portraits (especially of her children) and landscapes, her favorite subject matter was flowers, especially hollyhocks, which she also grew in her garden at Westwood. Her works were exhibited at expositions throughout the South, and occasionally won various awards. Her paintings are currently part of the collections of the Knoxville Museum of Art, the

East Tennessee History Center The East Tennessee Historical Society (ETHS), headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, is a non-profit organization dedicated to the study of East Tennessee history, the preservation of historically significant artifacts, and educating ...

, and the

Tennessee State Museum The Tennessee State Museum is a large museum in Nashville depicting the history of the U.S. state of Tennessee. The current facility opened on October 4, 2018, at the corner of Rosa Parks Boulevard and Jefferson Street at the foot of Capitol Hil ...

. Lutz did much of her work in her studio in Westwood. The studio consists of one long room resembling a

cathedral A cathedral is a church that contains the '' cathedra'' () of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denominatio ...

, with a high ceiling and skylights. The walls are painted in Lutz's preferred color of red. The studio's fireplace contains tiles painted with the portraits of Lutz's favorite authors.

Gallery

Image:Adelia-armstrong-lutz-painting1.jpg, Still-life of

Hollyhock ''Alcea'' is a genus of over 80 species of flowering plants in the mallow family Malvaceae, commonly known as the hollyhocks. They are native to Asia and Europe. The single species of hollyhock from the Americas, the streambank wild hollyhock, ...

s Image:Still-life-adelia-armstrong-lutz.png, Still-life Image:Rest-by-adelia-armstrong-lutz.jpg, Rest Image:Mary-henderson-kirkland-by-lutz.jpg, Mary Kirkland, wife of
James Kirkland

References

External links

*
Adelia Lutz
– entries at the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection {{DEFAULTSORT:Lutz, Adelia Armstrong People from Knoxville, Tennessee 1859 births 1931 deaths Painters from Tennessee American women painters 20th-century American painters Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni 19th-century American painters People from Jefferson County, Tennessee Mary Baldwin University alumni 20th-century American women artists 19th-century American women artists Wikipedia articles incorporating text from A Woman of the Century