E. Charlton Fortune

E. Charlton Fortune
Monterey Bay, 1916, 30 x 40 inches, Oakland Museum of California
Born	Euphemia Charlton Fortune (1885-01-15)January 15, 1885 Sausalito, California
Died	May 15, 1969(1969-05-15) Carmel, California
Nationality	American
Known for	oil painting
Movement	American Impressionism

Euphemia Charlton Fortune (1885–1969) was an American Impressionist artist from California. She was trained in Europe, New York and San Francisco. She painted many portraits as well as landscape views of California and European sites. In midlife she turned to liturgical design. She signed her paintings "E. Charlton Fortune," which helped conceal her gender.

Fortune was born in Sausalito, Marin County, California, on January 15, 1885. Her father was a Scot, William Ranken Fortune, and her mother was a native of San Francisco, Helen Hersberg. She eschewed her given name Euphemia, and was known to friends as Effie. Having a cleft palate, as did her father, Effie resolved to never marry, lest the trait be passed on. She came from a wealthy family and was able to travel widely throughout her life.

Her father developed lung disease by 1890, prompting the family to move to Southern California in 1891. The father died in 1894. In 1898 an aunt visited from Scotland and took Effie back with her, where she enrolled in St. Margaret's Convent in Edinburgh. She graduated in 1904 and went to London, where she studied at St John's Wood School of Art.

In 1905, she returned to San Francisco, where she studied at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art, then directed by Arthur Frank Mathews.

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed the Fortune family's home, virtually all of Effie's paintings, and the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art. The following year the family relocated to New York City, where she studied at the Art Students League until 1910. Frank Vincent DuMond was a favorite teacher from whom she learned the importance of expressing her own individuality and the importance of light effects. From the South American F. Luis Mora she learned the skills of an illustrator. Fortune often painted at Lake George with DuMond. As she sought out further outdoor venues, she was invited by Spencer Trask to paint at in the Catskill Mountains. She was elected women's vice president of the Art Student's League and contributed some illustrations to Harpers Magazine. She also studied with William Merritt Chase in her last year at the Art Students League.