Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer

{{Infobox artist

| name = Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer

| image = Hergesheimer-Selfportrait.jpg

| imagesize =

| caption = Self-portrait (1931)

| birth_name =

| birth_date = January 7, 1873

| birth_place = Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S.

| death_date = {{death-date and age|June 24, 1943|January 7, 1873}}

| death_place = Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.

| nationality = American

| education = Philadelphia School of Design for Women, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art

| field = Painting

| movement =

| works =

| patrons =

| influenced by =

| influenced =

}}

Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer (January 7, 1873 – June 24, 1943) was an American illustrator, painter, and printmaker who painted and illustrated Tennessee society and other objects and people, including the state's women and children.{{Cite web |title=Feb 26, 1938, page 17 - Nashville Banner at Newspapers.com |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/605279529/?match=1&terms=%22Chase%20Summer%20School%22 |access-date=2024-11-05 |website=Newspapers.com |language=en}} As a printmaker, she pioneered the white-line woodcut.{{Cite news |last=Outwater | first=Myra Yellin| title=Easton Show Pulls Gems From Area Art Collections. | newspaper=The Morning Call | pages=F.10| date=February 11, 2001}}

Early life and education

File:Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer, Portrait of Madeline McDowell Breckinridge, 1920.jpg]]

Image:Joseph Byrns.jpg Joseph W. Byrns, Sr., now on display at the United States Capitol]]

File:US Navy 030909-N-0000X-001 A painting by E. Sophonisba Hergesheimer of Cmdr. Matthew Fontaine Maury.jpg, donated to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where it is on display in the Academy's Maury Hall]]

Hergesheimer was born on January 7, 1873, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to parents Charles P. Hergesheimer and Ellamanda Ritter Hergesheimer.Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer. Death June 24, 1943. Tennessee Deaths and Burials, 1874–1955. She was encouraged to create art in her childhood.[http://thejohnsoncollection.org/ella-sophonisba-hergesheimer/ Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer.] Johnson Collection. Retrieved August 20, 2014.

Hergesheimer was the great-great granddaughter of Charles Willson Peale, a Philadelphia artist who named one of his daughters Sophonisba after the Italian artist, Sofonisba Anguissola. Hergesheimer chose to use Sophonisba as her first name.

She studied at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women for two years,{{cite web|url=http://www.wku.edu/Library/onlinexh/kwa/hergesheimer.html |title=Kentucky Women Artists, 1850-1970: Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer |access-date=16 November 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080516030846/http://www.wku.edu/Library/onlinexh/kwa/hergesheimer.html |archive-date=16 May 2008 }} and then went on to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts for four years. At the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, she studied with Cecilia Beaux, Hugh Breckenridge, and William Merritt Chase.{{cite web|url=http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=H042 |title=Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture: Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer |access-date=16 November 2008 |last=Walker |first=Celia }}{{dead link|date=December 2016 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}{{Cite news |last=Talbot |first=Kate |date=1938-02-26 |title=An Artist Who Takes All the Prizes |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/nashville-banner-an-artist-who-takes-all/162667259/ |access-date=2025-01-09 |work=Nashville Banner |pages=17 |via=Newspapers.com}} She was considered by Chase to be one of his finest students, and spent the summer of 1900 studying at Chase's Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art on Long Island. As a senior at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, she was judged the best pupil in her class and was awarded the Cresson Traveling Scholarship.{{cite web|url=http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/graphics/findaids/hergesh.htm |title=University of Delaware: Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer Collection |access-date=16 November 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080907065138/http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/graphics/findaids/hergesh.htm |archive-date=September 7, 2008 }}

This allowed her to study abroad in Europe for three years, where she trained at the Académie Colarossi and exhibited at the Paris Salon. She is listed among the students of Blanche Lazzell, who was known for her white-line color woodcuts.Doll, Susan M. (2004), "Blanche Lazzell Biography", Blanche Lazzell: The Life and Work of an American Modernist, Morgantown: West Virginia University Press {{ISBN|0-937058-84-X}}

Career

As a result of having her work including in a 1905 traveling exhibition organized by the Nashville Art Association, she received a commission in 1907 to paint the portrait of Holland Nimmons McTyeire, the Methodist bishop who convinced Cornelius Vanderbilt to endow Vanderbilt University. To work on the commission, she relocated to Nashville, Tennessee, where she remained the rest of her life - first occupying a studio on Church Street, and later one at Eighth Avenue and Broadway. She spoke fondly of the region and its residents, stating: "The country around Nashville is, some of it, the most beautiful I have ever seen––a large and bounteous field for the landscape painter. There are hosts of beautiful women and children and strong, fine men to inspire great portraits."{{Cite book|last=Johnson Collection (Spartanburg, S.C.)|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1022076481|title=Central to their lives : Southern women artists in the Johnson Collection|others=Blackman, Lynne|date=20 June 2018|isbn=978-1-61117-955-2|location=Columbia, South Carolina|oclc=1022076481}}

She also conducted art classes in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where her circle of friends included fellow artists Frances Fowler, Sarah Peyton, and Wickliffe Covington. She also maintained a lifelong friendship with landscape painter Orlando Gray Wales, who also was raised in Allentown and also studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Hergesheimer's most notable portraits are those of Speaker of the House Joseph W. Byrns, Sr., which hangs in the United States Capitol building, and of Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury, which hangs in Maury Hall at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Though portraiture was her primary source of income, Hergesheimer experimented in other painting genres and artistic techniques, including printmaking, which she pursued alongside the artist Blanche Lazzell.{{Cite web|title=Ella Hergesheimer|url=http://thejohnsoncollection.org/ella-hergesheimer/|access-date=2020-06-02|website=The Johnson Collection, LLC|language=en}}

Death

Hergesheimer died on June 24, 1943, in Davidson County, Tennessee.

Awards

Gold medal, Appalachian Exposition (1910)
Gold medal, Tennessee State Exposition (1926)

Major exhibitions

American Artists Professional League
Art Institute of Chicago
Corcoran Gallery of Art
National Academy of Design
New Orleans Art Association
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Salons of America
Sesquicentennial Exposition, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1926)
Society of Independent Artists

Colleagues and affiliations

American Artists Professional League
American Federation of Arts
National Arts Club
New Orleans Art Association
Salons of America
Society of Independent Artists
Southern States Art League
Washington, D.C. Watercolor Club

Collections

Some of the major collectors of Hergesheimer's work are:[http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/graphics/findaids/hergesh.htm Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer.] UD Library Collections. University of Delaware. Retrieved August 20, 2014.