Hestia Mural 35th Anniversary Lecture Series
Every Delicate Shade Imaginable:
The Adventurous Lathrop Artist-Sisters (and Their Black Sheep Brother)
The Adventurous Lathrop Artist-Sisters (and Their Black Sheep Brother)
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Speaker:
Date: Location: |
Eve Kahn, Antiques Columnist, New York Times
Saturday, November 7, 2015 at 2 pm Historic Northampton, 46 Bridge Street, Northampton |
New York Times antiques columnist Eve M. Kahn will cover what's known and what's still mysterious about the Lathrop sisters - three women artists who had impressive resumes but left little paper trail.
Hestia Mural Figure 4: Susanne Lathrop
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Clara Welles Lathrop, Bessie Stebbins Lathrop and Susanne Lathrop ran an artistic salon in Northampton, attracting speakers as renowned as the art historian Bernard Berenson. They traveled widely from Venice and Norway to Nova Scotia. They exhibited their work from Paris to Indiana and they taught art at numerous western Massachusetts institutions including the Clarke school for the deaf. They are buried side by side in the Bridge Street Cemetery.
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Susanne Lathrop, circa 1885
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They would be largely forgotten now if Susanne were not immortalized on the Hestia Mural.
The sisters were born in Savannah, where their father Henry was a dry-goods merchant. Their mother, Clarissa Stebbins Lathrop, was the daughter of Daniel Stebbins, a pioneer of silk cultivation who grew mulberry trees and raised silkworms on his Bridge Street property in Northampton. The family spent the Civil War and its aftermath in Montreal (the family fled under a cloud of suspicion of aiding the Confederacy). They all eventually studied at Smith College.
In the Studio of the Lathrop Sisters
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Clara Welles Lathrop (1853-1907) trained in Paris and at the Art Students League and Pratt Institute in New York. She taught at various girls’ schools including Miss Hall’s, she painted in artists’ colonies in Holland and Cornwall, and she exhibited watercolors and oil paintings at major venues in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Indianapolis, Springfield, New York and Paris. She was best known for her scenes of Dutch women and interiors and bouquets of flowers. In 1906, she became second in command of Smith’s art department under Dwight Tryon. After she died suddenly of meningitis, during commencement celebrations in 1907, she was praised for her selfless hard work and “grace of refinement.” A handful of her works survive, including her 1893 world’s fair contribution, a portrait of a Dutch girl flower seller, (at Smith) and her pastel portrait of Emily Dickinson’s sister-in-law Susan (at Harvard).
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 Bessie Lathrop
Bessie Stebbins Lathrop (1854-1930) became a leatherworker and woodcarver. She studied at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art and with the sculptor Karl von Rydingsvard. She taught her craft at the Clarke Institution (later the Clarke School for the Deaf). She exhibited a carved panel at the 1893 world’s fair. She set up her own shows in various venues including the Waldorf-Astoria, and she documented family history with gifts to the Forbes Library of Stebbins archives and silk samples. One of her few known surviving works is a German-inspired triangular chair now at the Emily Dickinson complex. At right, is a photograph of the studio with carved furniture, likely by Bessie Lathrop.
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The artists' studio with woodcarvings in the manner of Bessie Lathrop
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Susanne Lathrop (right) in her studio
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Susanne Lathrop (1860-1938) trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and in Paris, where she studied under William-Adolphe Bouguereau at Julien's Paris studio. Following her stay in Paris, Susanne returned to Northampton and taught at the Clarke Institution, the Mary A. Burnham School and at Smith College. She exhibited at venues in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Boston, and she illustrated publications including histories of the Northampton region and an acclaimed children’s book, In Mythland, a book of Greek myths adapted for children by M. Helen Beckwith. One of her reviewers raved: “The beauty-loving gods would approve of such representation.” |
Since 2008, Eve M. Kahn has been the Antiques columnist for the New York Times, covering topics ranging from Egyptian animal mummies to 1970s subway station murals. Her biography of the Lathrop sisters' friend, the Smith teacher and painter Mary Rogers Williams (1857-1907), is due out in 2017 from Wesleyan University Press.