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
The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams
A Public Talk by Eve M. Kahn, author and former Antiques columnist for The New York TImes
Grand Canal, c. 1894 pastel, 11½ x 17 in.
by Mary Rogers Williams Private collection (photo: Ted Hendrickson). |
Date
Sunday, March 1, 2020 | 4:30 pm
Admission
$5 members, donors and students; $10 all others
Registration
This program is filled to capacity.
Location
Historic Northampton 46 Bridge Street, Northampton, Massachusetts Sponsored by Seth Mias Catering
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Undated cyanotype of Mary leafing through paintings.
Private collection. Mary’s importance is partly due
to quantities of surviving correspondence, paintings and ephemera. |
Eve M. Kahn, independent scholar and 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).
Mary Rogers Williams had a 20-year-long teaching career in the art department of Smith College. A baker's daughter from Hartford, Connecticut, she biked and hiked from the Arctic Circle to Naples, exhibited from Paris to Indianapolis, chafed against art world rules that favored men and wrote thousands of pages about her travels and work, but sadly ended up almost totally obscure. Kahn will explain her own detective work and the Northampton angles of Mary's lively letters and unpublished artworks, which capture pensive gowned women, Norwegian slopes reflected in icy waters, saw-tooth rooflines on French chateaus, incense hazes in Italian chapels, and Connecticut River Valley pastures at sunset. Copies of Kahn's book Forever Seeing New Beauties will be available for sale (hardcover, $35). |
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A Girl in Red, undated (pre-1901)
by Mary Rogers Williams oil on panel, 21 x 14 in. Private collection (photo: Ted Hendrickson) |
Azay-le-Rideau near Tours, France, undated (probably 1902)
by Mary Rogers Williams pastel, 9 x 5 in. Private collection (photo: Ted Hendrickson |
The Pink Gown
(also called Woman in Pink), c. 1895 by Mary Rogers Williams 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, N.Y.) |