Anna Lynch (April 22, 1865 – January 8, 1946) was an American painter. Lynch, whose birthdate is sometimes given as 1868, was born in Elgin,

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

. A student of

John Vanderpoel John Henry Vanderpoel (November 15, 1857 – May 2, 1911), born Johannes (Jan) van der Poel, was a Dutch-American artist and teacher, best known as an instructor of figure drawing. His book ''The Human Figure'', a standard art school resource fea ...

at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...

, she first exhibited portrait miniatures at the institution's annual exhibition in 1897. She would go on to show work in the school's annual shows for local artists for over thirty years. In 1902 Lynch traveled to

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, where her instructors at the Académie Julian included

William-Adolphe Bouguereau William-Adolphe Bouguereau (; 30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905) was a French academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female ...

and Gabrielle Debillemont-Chardon. She showed work in the Paris Salons of 1903 and 1904 before returning to Chicago in 1905, a year before her miniatures were the subject of a solo exhibition at the Art Institute. She began exhibiting widely elsewhere, receiving a bronze medal at the

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in 1915. In 1921 she was among the founding members of the Chicago Society of Miniature Painters, whose first president she became. Lynch took studio space in the Tree Building in 1908. She was especially noted for miniatures of children, but as the medium lost popularity she began to create more full-sized portraits, as well as still-life images. Later in her career she produced landscapes and marine paintings, many based on trips she had taken abroad to France and Spain. She was conservative in style, showing with the Chicago Society of Painters and Sculptors and the Society for Sanity in Art as well as the Chicago Galleries Association, but at the same time she also belonged to the

Arts Club of Chicago Arts Club of Chicago is a private club and public exhibition space located in the Near North Side community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States, a block east of the Magnificent Mile, that exhibits international contemporar ...

, more modern in outlook. Lynch died in her hometown of Elgin.

References

1860s births 1946 deaths American portrait miniaturists 19th-century American painters 19th-century American women painters 20th-century American painters 20th-century American women painters School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni Académie Julian alumni People from Elgin, Illinois Painters from Chicago {{US-painter-1860s-stub