Forever Seeing New Beauties: The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams
A Public Talk by Eve M. Kahn, author and former Antiques columnist for The New York Times
Mary Rogers Williams (1857-1907) leafing through paintings. Undated cyanotype. Private collection. Mary’s importance is partly due to quantities of surviving correspondence, ephemera and other
belongings. |
Independent scholar Eve M. Kahn, the former Antiques columnist for The New York Times, will lecture on her new book, Forever Seeing New Beauties: The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams, 1857-1907 (Wesleyan University Press). Williams was an American tonalist and Impressionist artist known for pastel and oil portraits and landscapes. She was second in command of Smith College's art department from 1888 to 1906 under Dwight William Tryon. Her classes at Smith included drawing, painting, sculpture, art history, "study of design with practical work" and "artistic anatomy." Williams earned acclaim for paintings of her native New England and scenes from her wide travels in Europe.
A baker's daughter from Hartford, Connecticut, Williams biked and hiked from the Arctic Circle to Naples, exhibited from Paris to Indianapolis, trained at the Art Students League, chafed against art world rules that favored men, wrote thousands of pages about her travels and work, taught at Smith College for nearly two decades, but sadly ended up almost totally obscure. The book reproduces her unpublished artworks that capture pensive gowned women, Norwegian slopes reflected in icy waters, saw-tooth rooflines on French chateaus, and incense hazes in Italian chapels, and it offers a vivid portrayal of an adventurer, defying her era's expectations. Kahn will explain her own detective work and the Northampton angles of Mary's lively letters and unpublished artworks.
Copies of Eve Kahn's new book Forever Seeing New Beauties will be available for sale at the talk (hardcover, $35). |
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A Girl in Red, undated (pre-1901)
Mary Rogers Williams oil on panel, 21 x 14 in. Private collection (photo: Ted Hendrickson) |
Azay-le-Rideau near Tours, France
Mary Rogers Williams undated (probably 1902) pastel, 9 x 5 in. Private collection (photo: Ted Hendrickson) |
The Pink Gown
(also called Woman in Pink) Mary Rogers Williams c. 1895 pastel, 12 x 8 in. Shown at the New York Water Color Club and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1895. Private collection (photo: Stair Galleries, Hudson, NY) |