Women Artists in the Back Bay

By 1875, Boston was far from the somber City on a Hill settled by English Puritans in 1630. Buoyed by wealth from the old China Trade and from new industry and investment, proper Bostonians proclaimed their city the “Athens of America” and proudly supported its artistic and intellectual growth. Boston had space for this cultural expansion. An ambitious landfill project, begun in 1857 and completed by 1890, transformed unsightly tidal mudflats into the fashionable Back Bay, inspiring cultural, religious, and educational institutions to migrate there from Boston’s older business district.

New money, new land, and a new interest in advancing American culture after the Civil War were joined by another late nineteenth century innovation: the “New Woman.” Women played increasingly significant public roles in literature, education, social work, medicine, and especially fine arts. They became expert artists in a variety of media. Many lived, worked, exhibited, and assembled in homes, studios, and societies scattered across Boston’s new Back Bay.

This ninety-minute walking tour takes visitors past the sites of former homes, studios, and works of many women artists. It was created to complement the Museum of Fine Arts exhibition “A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston 1870–1940” which was on view from August 15 through December 2, 2001).
(Click on a number for details on each site.)

1: Park Square: The Early Years Park Square at Boylston Street

Boston’s early women artists, like their male colleagues, worked in Park Square and adjacent stretches of Tremont and Boylston streets, once the center of the city’s art world. Here in 1868 Boston’s leading painter, William Morris Hunt (1824–1879), began teaching classes for women in the Studio Building (1864) on the corner of Boylston Street and Park Square. Despite criticism from those who thought he was wasting his time, Hunt offered his female students technical skills, inspiration, and a sense of self-worth. His efforts lived on through his pupil Helen Knowlton (1832–1918), who used his methods in her own classes for many years. Hunt empowered these early women artists, but Knowlton maintained their circle of support and friendship.

Also in Park Square is Thomas Ball’s Emancipation Group (1877), probably his most famous sculpture.

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2: Lily Glass Works: Women in Multiple Media 184–320 Boylston Street

This strip of land, now dominated by the Four Seasons and Heritage on the Garden, was once an unbroken row of houses that included residences, a hotel, offices, shops, and studios. During the 1890s, women dressmakers, milliners, physicians, teachers, and artists all worked here. The multi-talented Sarah Wyman Whitman (1842–1904) opened a studio, Lily Glass Works, at 184 Boylston, producing fine stained glass for Boston’s Trinity Church and Harvard’s Memorial Hall in Cambridge. She also painted landscapes, still lifes, and portraits, and designed elegant book covers for publisher Houghton Mifflin. Pictorialist photographer Alice Austin (1859–1943), painter Lilla Cabot Perry (1848–1933), bookbinder Mary Sears (1880–1938), silversmith Elizabeth Copeland (1866–1957), and miniature and pastel painter Laura Coombs Hills (1859–1952) also worked in this block.

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3: The Public Garden: Challenge & Change From Charles Street entrance of the Public Garden (directly across from the entrance to the Boston Common garage) to the corner of Arlington and Boylston

The first area developed in the Back Bay was the Public Garden. Opened in 1837 as a privately owned botanical garden, it grew into a splendid public park featuring a lagoon, Swan Boats, and fine sculpture, mostly crafted by men. Still, many diverse women artists have connections here. Painter Ellen Day Hale’s father, minister and author Edward Everett Hale, was immortalized with a statue by the Charles Street entrance. Ellen Hale (1855–1940) fulfilled the expectations of unmarried women of her time; in addition to her career, she acted as her father’s hostess.

Women sculptors were more often commissioned for garden statuary or fountains than for heroic works like Thomas Ball’s 1869 equestrian George Washington, near the Arlington Street side of the Garden. Bashka Paeff (1893–1979) was a Russian-born Jew who supported her studies by selling tokens in the Park Street subway station. She crafted the charming Boy and Bird Fountain (1934), also near Arlington Street. The statue of abolitionist senator Charles Sumner on the Boylston Street side of the Garden should have been the work of a woman sculptor, but it’s not. Anne Whitney (1821–1915) won the competition, but the Boston Art Committee reneged after learning the artist was female, and selected Thomas Ball instead. Whitney installed her version in Harvard Square in 1902.

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4: The Women’s Educational and Industrial Union: Art, Society & Charity Corner of Arlington and Boylston Streets

Women often supported art through charitable causes. The Women’s Educational and Industrial Union was created to help working-class women by offering programs for job training, placement, and protection. Through its fund-raising pageants and craft sales, the WEIU offered a socially acceptable outlet for some women artists, a contrast to the commercial venues that men preferred. A swan has adorned the WEIU since it opened in 1877—the year the Paget family began running the Swan Boats.

Several women artists lived and worked between Arlington and Clarendon streets, including painter Margaret Fitzhugh Browne (1884–1972), wood-carver Molly Coolidge (1881–1962), sculptor Katharine Lane (Weems) (1899–1989), and designer Ethel Reed (1874–ca.1920). Reed, whose studio was at 367 Boylston (now the site of Jos. A. Bank Clothiers), was an illustrator whose innovative designs reflected Japanese prints, Art Nouveau, and Aubrey Beardsley. After 1898, she mysteriously disappeared from public view.

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5a: Sarah Sears: Women Art Collectors & Patrons 1 Commonwealth Avenue (Harbridge House) at Arlington and Commonwealth

Boston women were also collectors. One Commonwealth Avenue (5a) was once the home of Sarah Choate Sears (1858–1935), a talented pictorialist photographer and painter. Sears both bought art and championed artists. Her collection, now dispersed, was once among the most progressive in Boston.

5b: Belle Gardner: Women Art Collectors & Patrons 150–152 Beacon Street (between Berkeley and Clarendon)

Wealthy art patron Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) lived at 150–152 Beacon Street (5b) before her neo-Venetian palace, Fenway Court (today’s Gardner Museum), opened in 1903. Like Sarah Sears, Gardner nurtured the talents of painters, musicians, and writers, and purchased their work for her museum-home. Her collection of old master paintings is world-renowned to this day.

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6: Art Galleries and Schools: Marketable Skills Along Boylston Street toward Copley Square

Galleries where women artists exhibited and sold their work were once found on these blocks. Lilian Westcott Hale (1880–1963) made her artistic debut in 1908 with a display of magical charcoal drawings at Rowlands Galleries at 402 Boylston. The Copley Gallery, where Laura Hills showed her exquisite miniatures, was at 431 Boylston. Doll and Richards, where Polly Thayer (born 1904) exhibited dynamic portraits, was once at 138 Newbury.

At 501 Boylston stood the Rogers Building (1863), the first structure on the original campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It looked like the building that now houses the Louis of Boston clothing store (which once housed the Boston Museum of Natural History, today’s Museum of Science). In 1865–66, M.I.T. opened the first school of architecture in the United States. Because of its land grant status, it was required to admit women. Christel Orvis of Jamaica Plain attended the school as early as 1866–69. Sophia Hayden was the first woman to graduate from its four-year architectural program in 1890.
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7: Copley Square: The Art World’s Hub of the Hub Copley Square, from St. James to Boylston and Newbury Streets

Art Square (renamed Copley in 1883 to honor the famous eighteenth-century portraitist) was a microcosm of the best of the new Back Bay. On the site of today’s Fairmont Copley Plaza was the original Museum of Fine Arts (1876) and its School; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, in Copley Square, about 1895diagonally across was H. H. Richardson’s Romanesque Revival masterpiece, Trinity Church (1877), and opposite the church stood the magnificent Boston Public Library (1895), designed in the Renaissance style and, like Trinity, ornamented by renowned artists. Though men dominated these institutions, women were also present. Sarah Whitman designed a window for the Trinity Church Parish House to commemorate the life of its legendary rector, Phillips Brooks. In Bates Hall, the Boston Public Library displays Anne Whitney’s bust of Boston-based suffragist Lucy Stone, created for the 1893 World’s Fair.

The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, which opened in 1877, welcomed aspiring women artists. Hundreds attended, either here or on Huntington Avenue, where the MFA relocated in 1909. Gretchen Rogers (1881–1967), one of its most talented pupils, became a popular portraitist and figure painter. She lived at 126 Newbury Street. Lilian Hale studied here on a scholarship. She successfully balanced an artistic career while raising a family—a feat many doubted was possible.

Studios, art associations, galleries, and schools were scattered throughout the area. Gertrude Fiske (1878– 1961), Marion Louise Pooke (1883–1975), and Marion Boyd Allen (1862–1941) all worked in the Copley Hall Studios at 198 Clarendon (at St. James). The Cowles Art School, where many women studied, was once two blocks behind the old MFA, in the New Studio Building at 145 Dartmouth, near Back Bay Station.

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8: The Art Club Scene: Art & Acceptance From the corner of Dartmouth and Newbury to 150, 158, and 162 Newbury Street

Three artists’ groups near Copley Square reveal the opposing positions that Boston organizations held toward women as professional artists. At the corner of Dartmouth and Newbury streets is Muriel Snowden International High School, named for a longtime African-American community activist. In 1880, this building was the Boston Art Club. Founded in 1855, the club’s members were both professional artists and laymen, but not women. Women could always exhibit there, but only in the midst of the Depression, when the brotherhood was in financial difficulty, were they invited to join. Without that reluctantly opened door, talented women such as sculptor Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877–1968) might never have become members. Fuller, a Philadelphia-born African- American sculptor, had studied in Paris. She came to Massachusetts after her marriage to Solomon Fuller, America’s first African-American psychiatrist. Her husband expected a conventional wife, but she used her own money to build a studio, where she produced works on suffrage, world peace, and African-American traditions. While standing on the corner of Dartmouth and Newbury, note DuBarry’s Newbury Street Mural, which includes many well-known Boston women, among them Anne Whitney and Isabella Stewart Gardner.

Installation of the first exhibition of the Guild of Boston Artists, November 1914The Copley Society (158 Newbury), America’s oldest nonprofit art association, was created by the first women to graduate from the Museum School. The Society served both men and women; among its distinguished female members were Sarah Sears, Sarah Whitman, Margaret Fitzhugh Browne, and Lilian Hale. It sponsored many exhibitions, including shows by internationally known artists such as Mary Cassatt and Cecilia Beaux.

Women also helped to found the Guild of Boston Artists (162 Newbury) in 1914. Prestigious female members have included still-life and portrait painter Adelaide Cole Chase (1868–1944); Gertrude Fiske, the first woman named to the Massachusetts Art Commission; and painter Lilla Cabot Perry, among the first to interest Bostonians in the Impressionism of Claude Monet.

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9: The Society of Arts and Crafts: Creating & Collecting Crafts 175 Newbury Street

Art Square (renamed Copley in 1883 to honor the famous eighteenth-century portraitist) was a microcosm of the best of the new Back Bay. On the site of today’s Fairmont Copley Plaza was the original Museum of Fine Arts (1876) and its School; diagonally across was H. H. Richardson’s Romanesque Revival masterpiece, Trinity Church (1877), and opposite the church stood the magnificent Boston Public Library (1895), designed in the Renaissance style and, like Trinity, ornamented by renowned artists. Though men dominated these institutions, women were also present. Sarah Whitman designed a window for the Trinity Church Parish House to commemorate the life of its legendary rector, Phillips Brooks. In Bates Hall, the Boston Public Library displays Anne Whitney’s bust of Boston-based suffragist Lucy Stone, created for the 1893 World’s Fair.

The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, which opened in 1877, welcomed aspiring women artists. Hundreds attended, either here or on Huntington Avenue, where the MFA relocated in 1909. Gretchen Rogers (1881–1967), one of its most talented pupils, became a popular portraitist and figure painter. She lived at 126 Newbury Street. Lilian Hale studied here on a scholarship. She successfully balanced an artistic career while raising a family—a feat many doubted was possible.

Studios, art associations, galleries, and schools were scattered throughout the area. Gertrude Fiske (1878– 1961), Marion Louise Pooke (1883–1975), and Marion Boyd Allen (1862–1941) all worked in the Copley Hall Studios at 198 Clarendon (at St. James). The Cowles Art School, where many women studied, was once two blocks behind the old MFA, in the New Studio Building at 145 Dartmouth, near Back Bay Station.

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10: Massachusetts Normal School: Wealth & the Woman Artist Corner of Exeter and Newbury

Three artists’ groups near Copley Square reveal the opposing positions that Boston organizations held toward women as professional artists. At the corner of Dartmouth and Newbury streets is Muriel Snowden International High School, named for a longtime African-American community activist. In 1880, this building was the Boston Art Club. Founded in 1855, the club’s members were both professional artists and laymen, but not women. Women could always exhibit there, but only in the midst of the Depression, when the brotherhood was in financial difficulty, were they invited to join. Without that reluctantly opened door, talented women such as sculptor Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877–1968) might never have become members. Fuller, a Philadelphia-born African- American sculptor, had studied in Paris. She came to Massachusetts after her marriage to Solomon Fuller, America’s first African-American psychiatrist. Her husband expected a conventional wife, but she used her own money to build a studio, where she produced works on suffrage, world peace, and African-American traditions. While standing on the corner of Dartmouth and Newbury, note DuBarry’s Newbury Street Mural, which includes many well-known Boston women, among them Anne Whitney and Isabella Stewart Gardner.

The Copley Society (158 Newbury), America’s oldest nonprofit art association, was created by the first women to graduate from the Museum School. The Society served both men and women; among its distinguished female members were Sarah Sears, Sarah Whitman, Margaret Fitzhugh Browne, and Lilian Hale. It sponsored many exhibitions, including shows by internationally known artists such as Mary Cassatt and Cecilia Beaux.

Women also helped to found the Guild of Boston Artists (162 Newbury) in 1914. Prestigious female members have included still-life and portrait painter Adelaide Cole Chase (1868–1944); Gertrude Fiske, the first woman named to the Massachusetts Art Commission; and painter Lilla Cabot Perry, among the first to interest Bostonians in the Impressionism of Claude Monet.

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11: Commonwealth Avenue Mall: Progress & Process Commonwealth Ave. Mall at Exeter

The Commonwealth Avenue Mall, designed in 1865 to resemble the boulevards of Paris, is a showcase for public art. A variety of statues related to Boston history guard the landscaped greens linking the Back Bay’s “alphabet streets”: Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester, and Hereford. Here near Exeter Street is sculptor Penelope Jenck’s depiction of sailor and maritime historian Samuel Eliot Morison seated on a granite rock. Women created half of the art on the Mall: Jencks did Morison, Anne Whitney modeled Leif Eriksson, Yvette Compagnion sculpted Argentine president Domingo Sarmiento, and Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson worked with her husband on the bust of Boston Mayor Patrick Collins.

All of the statues between Arlington Street and Charlesgate are of or about men, but this will soon change. The Boston Women’s Memorial, a piece created by and about women (designed by sculptor Meredith Gang Bergmann) is due to appear in 2002 Anne Whitney, Leif Erikssonbetween Fairfield and Gloucester Streets. It will portray three women with connections to Boston who are associated with written words, deliberately set off their pedestals: revolutionary correspondent Abigail Adams, newspaperwoman Lucy Stone and poet Phillis Wheatley.

This is the last stop on this tour. If you walk to the end of the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, you will see Anne Whitney’s life-size Leif Eriksson (1887), commissioned in the belief that the Viking was the true European discoverer of America. Once you have traveled that far, look for the Fenway Studio Building (1905) at 30 Ipswich Street, where many women artists lived and worked. It is the oldest surviving structure specifically designed and still used for artists’ residences and studios.

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