Lucy May Stanton (May 22, 1875 – March 19, 1931) was an American painter. She made landscapes,

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

s, and portraits, but Stanton is best known for the

portrait miniature A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolor, or enamel. Portrait miniatures developed out of the techniques of the miniatures in illuminated manuscripts, and were popular among 16th-century eli ...

s she painted. Her works are in the

National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery may refer to: *National Portrait Gallery (Australia), in Canberra *National Portrait Gallery (Sweden), in Mariefred *National Portrait Gallery (United States), in Washington, D.C. *National Portrait Gallery, London, with s ...

in Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

, where ''Self-Portrait in the Garden'' (1928) and ''Miss Jule'' (1926) are part of the museum's permanent collection.

Early life

Stanton was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the first of two daughters of William Lewis Stanton and Frances Louisa Cleveland Megee Stanton. William had a wholesale business selling food, some of which came from the Stanton and Megee farms; machinery; lumber; and imported pottery from Europe. The family lived in the "fashionable" West End district of Atlanta on Gordon Street (now Ralph D. Abernathy Boulevard) in a Greek Revival house. A year after Lucy May Stanton was born, her sister Willie Marion Stanton was born. The family's summers were often spent in the mountains of North Georgia at Lucy's grandparent's farms. The Stantons spent many winters in the Pontalba Buildings of New Orleans, where William managed the import of Caribbean sugar, molasses, and rice. Lucy May Stanton was given a set of oil paints and began to learn to paint when she was seven years old. Mme Sally Seago, a French artist in New Orleans, gave Stanton lessons in New Orleans. Joel Chandler Harris by Lucy May Stanton

Joel Chandler Harris by Lucy May Stanton

In Atlanta, she lived across the street from Wren's Nest, the home of author and journalist Joel Chandler Harris, who wrote the Uncle Remus stories and shared his stories with her and her sister, Willie Marion Stanton. Her mother, Frances Megee Stanton, died in 1888. In 1889–1890 she took a tour of Europe with her father and studied watercolor painting in

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

Education and early career

Lucy and Willie were educated at the Southern Female College (now known as Cox College) in

LaGrange Joseph-Louis Lagrange (born Giuseppe Luigi Lagrangia She studied with another female French teacher, Mme Ada Autrie. Her father married Sallie Cox, a music instructor and member of the family that owned the school. Lucy's early miniature portraits were ones made of her sister in 1895 and another that was a copy of a family miniature. Her early miniatures were made with a stippling technique. In the two years following her graduation she worked as an art teacher at New Ebenezer College and as an assistant to Atlanta artist James P. Field who had been her art instructor at Southern Female College. During that time she began painting portrait miniatures, receiving her first commission in 1896, a portrait of the opera singer Adelina Patti. Later that year, she left for Paris where she studied painting, etching, and sculpture with the American-born artist

Augustus Koopman Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Pri ...

and miniature painting with American artist,

Virginia Richmond Reynolds Virginia Richmond Reynolds (1866 – 1903) was an American artist particularly known for her portrait miniatures. She was also an influential teacher of the genre. Early life and education Reynolds was born in Chicago, and studied first at the ...

. Stanton painted in Normandy in the summers with Koopman and other students. Koopman taught her to paint with originality and Reynolds introduced Stanton to parallel brush strokes, a new technique at the time. She also studied anatomy at the Sorbonne; took classes at two independent art schools in Paris which admitted women, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the

Académie Colarossi The Académie Colarossi (1870–1930) was an art school in Paris founded in 1870 by the Italian model and sculptor Filippo Colarossi. It was originally located on the Île de la Cité, and it moved in 1879 to 10 rue de la Grande-Chaumière in the ...

; and studied with James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

Career

Stanton, who grew up in Atlanta during its recovery from the Civil War, created works of art that represented her southern heritage, including a set of scenes of African American life that she called her "Little Murals" series, that included ''Loading Cotton'', ''Negroes Resting'', and ''Aunt Liza's Porch''. She exhibited the first miniature portrait of an African American in an 1899 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts exhibition. She also painted portraits of the Georgian Howell Cobb, who was Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Linton Ingraham who was an ex-slave, which are in the collections of the United States House of Representatives and the Museum of American Trade in Milton, Massachusetts, respectively. Her painting ''North Carolina Mountain Woman'' is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She returned to the United States in 1898 and began her career as an artist in earnest, exhibiting both there and in Europe. She taught at a YMCA night school, gave private lessons, and had a studio in Atlanta. In 1898 she made her first painting of an African American, ''Aunt Nicey Tuller''. She received commissions to paint portraits of influential people, including Charles A. Collier, was had been the mayor of Atlanta. It hands in the Atlanta City Hall. She taught again at what is now Cox College. Between 1901 and 1902, Stanton and her sister, Willie Marion, lived in Bryant Park Studios, across from Bryant Park. Lucy gave private art lessons and at the Episcopal Deaconess Hospital trained as a practical charity nurse. Stanton met naturalist

John Burroughs John Burroughs (April 3, 1837 – March 29, 1921) was an American naturalist and nature essayist, active in the conservation movement in the United States. The first of his essay collections was ''Wake-Robin'' in 1871. In the words of his bio ...

, took canoe trips to Maine, and visited friends in Boston, where in 1902 she exhibited in the second annual Copley Society of Art exhibition. More than 800 paintings were rejected by exhibition jurors for the show. Stanton had an extended visit to her father, stepmother, and her children in Los Angeles beginning in the Spring of 1904. In 1905 she traveled to Paris with her friend and fellow artist Polly Smith. She had a studio at 70 Rue Notre-Dame des Champs in Paris, where she had returned to study portrait painting with Lucien Simon and Jacques-Émile Blanche. Her ''Mother and Child'', a miniature portrait of her sister and nephew painted in 1905, won a Blue Ribbon the following year when it was exhibited at the New Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. From 1909, she maintained a studio and a small house in Athens, Georgia near the home of her sister. She then had studios in North Carolina in the Great Smokey Mountains and then in New York. From 1916 to 1926 she lived and worked primarily in Boston, at the time a center of miniaturist art. She had a studio on

Beacon Hill Beacon Hill may refer to: Places Canada * Beacon Hill, Ottawa, Ontario, a neighbourhood * Beacon Hill Park, a park in Victoria, British Columbia * Beacon Hill, Saskatchewan * Beacon Hill, Montreal, a neighbourhood in Beaconsfield, Quebec United ...

and spent her summers in Ogunquit, Maine. She made a watercolor portrait of Joel Chandler Harris about 1914, after he had died. In 1917 it won the Pennsylvania Society of Miniature Painters' Medal of Honor. She also taught art in several private schools there including Milton Academy and

Dana Hall Dana Eric Hall (born July 8, 1969) is a former professional American football player who was selected by the San Francisco 49ers in the 1st round (18th overall) of the 1992 NFL Draft. A 6'2", 206-lb. safety from the University of Washington, Hal ...

. Stanton settled permanently in Athens in 1926 where she was active in the civic life of the city, lecturing on art and organizing exhibitions as well as promoting women's suffrage and campaigning for the League of Nations. She was a co-founder of the Georgia Peace Society in 1928. Stanton caught a chill in March 1931 and subsequently died of pneumonia in an Athens hospital and was buried in the city's Oconee Hill Cemetery. She never married. Her papers, correspondence, photographs of family members and her works, and other relevant documents spanning from 1899 to 1931 are held at the Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Georgia.

Exhibitions

Some of her major exhibitions are: * 1899 to 1931 – Pennsylvania Society of Miniature Painters, more than 100 miniatures * 1899 to 1931 – Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 93 works of art, mostly miniatures * 1906, 1912 – Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, where she won a Blue Ribbon * 1910, 1920, 1926 – American Society of Miniature Painters * 1913 – United States Capitol Building * 1913–1915, 1922 – Art Institute of Chicago * 1914 – Royal Society of Miniatures, London * 1915 – Panama Pacific Exposition, San Francisco * 1919, 1921 – Washington Water Color Club * 1923 – Concord Art Association, Massachusetts, where she won a Medal of Honor She also had solo exhibitions in Boston, New York, New Orleans, and Baltimore.

Collections

Notes

References

External links

Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
Emory University
Lucy M. Stanton collection, 1910-1985
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stanton, Lucy May 1875 births 1931 deaths Cox College (Georgia) alumni 19th-century American painters 20th-century American painters Portrait miniaturists American women painters Painters from Georgia (U.S. state) Artists from Atlanta Deaths from pneumonia in Georgia (U.S. state) 20th-century American women artists 19th-century American women artists Académie Colarossi alumni