Elisabeth Chant

Elisabeth Augusta Chant (March 10, 1865 – September 21, 1947) was an American painter and teacher, noted especially for her landscapes.

Born in Yeovil, Somerset, Chant was the daughter of James Chant, a merchant captain involved in the Asian spice trade, and Elizabeth Rowe Wills; she was one of nine children. She claimed that before she was seven she had sailed the world as one of her father's passengers. With her family she immigrated to the United States in 1873, settling in Hawley, Minnesota, with numerous other Yeovil residents; upon her mother's death, her father moved the family to Minneapolis and opened a market. She early displayed a taste for art, but was encouraged to turn her talents elsewhere, so she enrolled in the Training School for Nurses at Northwestern Hospital for Women and Children and graduated in 1886. She continued taking art lessons, studying with Douglas Volk between 1890 and 1893 and receiving instructions in the evenings from Burt Harwood. The outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898 saw her transferred by the American Red Cross to the American South, where she worked in Savannah and Augusta, Georgia. She was discharged in 1899 and returned to Minneapolis, becoming active with the Handicraft Guild and the Minneapolis Art League and creating murals and decorative paintings as well as pottery and prints. During a two-year sojourn in England beginning in 1901 she traced her family's relationship to King Arthur and his court, with the result that much of her work became focused on medieval legends. The tour also provided fodder for a series of feature articles for the Minneapolis Journal. A decade later she moved to Springfield, Massachusetts for work, remaining for six years at a firm that specialized in various interior fittings and furnishings.

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