Bertha von Hillern (4 August 1853,

Trier Trier ( , ; lb, Tréier ), formerly known in English as Trèves ( ;) and Triers (see also names in other languages), is a city on the banks of the Moselle in Germany. It lies in a valley between low vine-covered hills of red sandstone in the ...

Prussian Rhineland The Rhine Province (german: Rheinprovinz), also known as Rhenish Prussia () or synonymous with the Rhineland (), was the westernmost province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia, within the German Reich, from 1822 to 1946. It ...

– 19 September 1939,

Staunton, Virginia Staunton ( ) is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 25,750. In Virginia, independent cities a ...

) was a

German-American German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...

athlete and artist.

Biography

At the age of twelve, Von Hillern began to study the science of

Pedestrianism Pedestrianism was a 19th-century form of competitive walking, often professional and funded by wagering, from which the modern sport of racewalking developed. 18th- and early 19th-century Britain During the late eighteenth and nineteenth cen ...

, and during her teens, she walked in several matches in Berlin and other European cities. Von Hillern emigrated to the United States in October 1875 and settled first in Chicago, Illinois. In February 1876, she participated in the first women's

6 Day Race The 6-Day Race became a standard footrace distance in the 1870s and was a popular form of entertainment with up to 70,000 paying visitors during such a Pedestrians event. However the widespread use of the bicycle from 1890 caused it to be replaced ...

in history against Mary Marshall. Von Hillern walked 231.5 miles, coming 2.5 miles short of victory. For the next two years, she continued to devote her time to advocating athletic exercises for women, and appearing in public as a

. She also gave demonstrations of bicycle riding. She gave up her public pedestrian activities to devote herself to the study of art, and later pursued art as a profession in Boston, where she exhibited a large number of

landscapes A landscape is the visible features of an area of Terrestrial ecoregion, land, its landforms, and how they integrate with Nature, natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionar ...

in 1888. Florida newspapers reported that in the 1880s von Hillern shared an atelier there for some years with an artist from Maine, Maria Graves Beckett, who signed her work "Maria J. C. à Becket". Both women had been students of

William Morris Hunt William Morris Hunt (March 31, 1824September 8, 1879) was an American painter. Born into the political Hunt family of Vermont, he trained in Paris with the realist Jean-François Millet and studied under him at the Barbizon artists’ colony, bef ...

in Boston. She later lived in

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States * Richmond, London, a part of London * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, ...

and

Winchester, Virginia Winchester is the most north western independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Frederick County, although the two are separate jurisdictions. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the city of Winchester wit ...

, with Emma Howard Wight.

Works

* "The Monk Felix," from

Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include "Paul Revere's Ride", ''The Song of Hiawatha'', and ''Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely transl ...

's "Golden Legend" * "Evening Prayer at the Wayside Shrine, Germany" (1883) * "The Conversion of the Heathen General Placidus, by a Miracle while Hunting" (1885) * "Live-Oak Forest in the Ojai Valley, California" (1887) * "

St. Paul Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...

, the First Hermit" * "A Walk through the Pine Barrens, Florida" (1888)

Notes

References

External links

* * * Portrait at: ** ** {{DEFAULTSORT:Hillern, Bertha von 1853 births 1939 deaths 19th-century American painters American women painters German emigrants to the United States People from Trier 19th-century American women artists