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The Art of First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson: American Impressionist
Ellen Axson Wilson (1860-1914), the first wife of President Woodrow Wilson, was a reform-minded First Lady and an artist in the American Impressionist style. Born in Savannah Georgia in 1860, Ellen demonstrated artistic ability from an early age. From 1875 to 1878 she studied art with Helen F. Fairchild at the Female College in Rome, Georgia. In 1878, at the age of 18, Ellen won a bronze medal for freehand drawing at the Paris International Exposition and launched a promising career as a professional artist.
In 1883 Ellen became engaged to Woodrow Wilson. While he was in his second year of graduate work in political science at Johns Hopkins University, she enrolled at the Art Students League in New York where she studied under leading American artists of the day, including George de Forest Brush, Thomas W. Dewing, Frederick Warren Freer, and Julian Alden Weir.
After their marriage in June 1885, Ellen immersed herself in establishing a home and raising a family. As her three daughters grew, she gradually began to paint more and more. She spent many summers at the art colony in Old Lyme, Connecticut, which became the center of American Impressionism. Among her fellow artists there were Frank DuMond, Childe Hassam, William S. Robinson, and Robert Vonnoh.
In November 1911 Ellen entered one of her canvases under an assumed name to be judged for an exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery in New York. When Ellen revealed her identity to the gallery's owner, William Macbeth, he encouraged her to enter more works, acting as her agent and advocate. After several successes, in March 1913, shortly before the presidential inaugural ceremonies, a one-woman show of fifty of Ellen's landscapes opened in Philadelphia.
In the summer of 1913 First Lady Ellen Wilson and her three daughters spent three months at "Harlakenden," a privately owned estate near Cornish, New Hampshire. The beauty and privacy of the New Hampshire hills inspired a burst of creative energy that enabled Ellen to paint almost every day. Cornish had a distinguished group of resident artists, among whom were Kenyon Cox, Maxfield Parrish, Anetta Johnson Saint-Gaudens, Adeline Valentine Pond Adams and her sculptor-husband Herbert, Ellen's former teacher at the Art Students League George de Forest Brush, and Robert Vonnoh and his sculptor-wife Bessie.
When Ellen returned to Washington in the fall of 1913, she planned to use the studio that had been installed for her in the process of a major renovation of the third floor of the White House. The demands of social duties, however, took precedence over her art. In the spring of 1914 Ellen was diagnosed with Bright's disease, a chronic ailment of the kidneys. She died in the White House on August 6, 1914, and was buried beside her parents in Rome, Georgia.
Ellen Wilson set a precedent for first ladies to use their influence in causes of humanitarian need. She pushed for improved working conditions for women and was deeply involved in trying to eradicate the segregated alley slums in Washington DC. She advocated education for women and used the proceeds from the sale of her paintings to establish a scholarship at the Martha Berry School in Rome, Georgia for needy girls and boys. |