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Artist Eleanor McAdoo Wiley (1876-1977)
Year 1930s
Medium Oil on canvas 26"x31" (canvas size)
Price Upon Request
Like her younger sister Catherine, Eleanor McAdoo Wiley painted in an Impressionist manner, favoring a pastel palette to create still lifes, portraiture, flower studies, and depictions of historic homes. While Catherine Wiley was the better-known, more influential artist of the two sisters, Eleanor made a lasting mark of her own on Knoxville’s cultural landscape through her work as a community leader, arts advocate, and portraitist.
The Wiley family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, around 1880. Eleanor studied at the University of Tennessee and at the Stevens Summer School of Painting, an art colony established by modernist painter Will Henry Stevens that operated in Gatlinburg from the early 1930s through at least 1939. She was an active member of the Nicholson Art League, and, in 1934, she founded the Knoxville Art Center, which later merged with the Dulin Gallery of Art and is known today as the Knoxville Museum of Art.
Eleanor Wiley was a popular portraitist who was frequently commissioned to depict prominent state citizens. In 1934, she participated in the Public Works of Art project, a government-funded art program sponsored by the WPA. As part of this effort, she painted a series of portraits on porcelain for the Knox County Public Library featuring notable men in Tennessee history, including presidents Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson. In honor of the state’s sesquicentennial celebration in 1946, Wiley produced portraits of two distinguished military leaders from Tennessee: the late Samuel P. Carter, who led a group of Union loyalists in East Tennessee during the Civil War, and Admiral Charles St. John Butler. Wiley was also commissioned by the University of Tennessee in 1951 to record the likeness of Dr. Philander Priestly Claxton, who established and directed the school’s Department of Education from 1902 to 1911, before serving as the United States Commissioner of Education. Eleanor Wiley’s work is held in the collections of the Tennessee State Museum, the Morris Museum of Art, the Museum of East Tennessee History, and the Knoxville Museum of Art.
Artist Ellen Day Hale (1855-1940)
Year 1888
Medium Oil on canvas 16"x22" (canvas size)
Price $850
Ellen Day Hale (February 11, 1855 – February 11, 1940)[1] was an American Impressionist painter and printmaker from Boston. She studied art in Paris and during her adult life lived in Paris, London and Boston. She exhibited at the Paris Salon and the Royal Academy of Arts. Hale wrote the book History of Art: A Study of the Lives of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and Albrecht Dürer and mentored the next generation of New England female artists, paving the way for widespread acceptance of female artists.
Hale's family background provided her with a network of strong female role models. Her great-aunt was Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and author of the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.[3] Educator Catharine Beecher and suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker were also great-aunts.[4] One of Hale's first cousins was writer and social reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, best known for her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper".
In 1873, Hale began her formal art education and training in Boston with painter William Rimmer. Although the changing cultural and social landscape of Boston provided many new opportunities for women, female students were still segregated from their male counterparts.[2] Therefore, Hale took private lessons from Rimmer, and his instruction focused primarily on drawing and the analysis of anatomy. A year later, Hale enrolled in William Morris Hunt's school for painting with approximately forty other women artists.
Seeking additional training, Hale traveled to Philadelphia in 1878 to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). Hale studied at PAFA for two years, where she first painted from the live female nude.[5] Hale attended the Academy while it was directed by Thomas Eakins, who, like William Rimmer, emphasized the study of human anatomy as the basis for figure painting.[2] After studying in Philadelphia, Hale traveled throughout Europe with Knowlton in 1881.
Artist Mildred “Millie” Lyle Dearing (1906-1995 )
Year 1951
Medium Watercolor on paper 14"x23" (image size)
Price $495
Not much is known of Mildred “Millie” Lyle Dearing’s personal life, but her contribution to the arts in Athens is well documented through her involvement with the Athens Art Association, primarily from the late 1950s onward and her work with the Georgia Museum of Art. Dearing was born in North Carolina in 1906 as the daughter of A.L. and Mary Dearing. After the death of her father in 1950, she moved to Athens. Upon her move to Athens, Dearing became the secretary to Alfred Heber Holbrook, the founder of the Georgia Museum of Art on the University of Georgia campus. Newspaper articles describing subsequent renovations show Dearing and Holbrook hanging images together. Dearing also served as secretary of Bill Paul, the next director of the Georgia Museum of Art and a professor at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia. Dearing worked on her own art too. According to the collection, Dearing showed her oil paintings at Athens Art Association art exhibitions from the late 1950s onward. She was an apprentice to Laura Blackshear, the founder of the Athens Art Association. Dearing is also listed among the Johnson Collection’s online list of Southern women artists; some of her pieces are held by that museum. Dearing died in 1995 and is buried in Oconee Hill Cemetery. Her work has been posthumously displayed at Athens Art Association retrospective events, including “A Century of Art” at the Lyndon House in 2019.
Work has overall even, consistent toning.
Artist Louise Cone (1889-1968 )
Year 1940s
Medium Oil on canvas 29"x36" (canvas size)
Price $695
Louise Schaefer Cone was born, reared and spent her adult life in Birmingham, Alabama. She studied locally under Edna Smith and visiting artists George Elmer Browne and Roderick MacKenzie. In New York she studied with Wayman Adams, George Bridgman, and Frank Vincent Dumond. She was a member of the New York Art League, Southern States Art League, and the Birmingham Art Club. She received numerous awards during her lifetime for works in oil and pastels. Mrs. Cone was equally proficient in landscape, portraiture, and still life compositions. Her portraits of prominent southerners hang throughout government buildings and museums in the south.
Artist Freda Widder Ledford (1894-1959)
Year ca. 1940s
Medium Watercolor on paper 16"x22" (image size)
Price $495
Freda Widder Ledford was born in Harrisburg, PA and became an instructor at the Harrisburg Art Institute where she specialized in flower paintings in oils, watercolors, and pastels. She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts under Hugh Breckenridge, Daniel Garber, and Philip Hale. She was awarded the Widmer scholarship and the Thouron Prize. Mrs. Ledford relocated to Asheville, North Carolina in the 1940s and remained there until her death in 1959. She is buried in Lewis Memorial Park in Buncombe County, North Carolina.