Eliza Pratt Greatorex

Eliza Pratt Greatorex (December 25, 1819 – February 9, 1897) was an Irish-born American artist who was affiliated with the Hudson River School. She is known for her landscape paintings as well as for several series of pen-and-ink drawings and etchings that were published in book form. She was the second woman to be elected an associate of the National Academy of Design, following Ann Hall.

Eliza Pratt was born in Manorhamilton, Ireland, the daughter of James Calcott Pratt, a Methodist minister. The family moved to New York in 1840, where in 1849 she married Henry Wellington Greatorex, a musician. They had three children: two daughters, Elizabeth Eleanor and Kathleen Honora — both of whom would grow up to become artists — and a son, Thomas, who is said to have died in Colorado, possibly during her 1873 trip.

Between 1854 and 1856, she studied art with the painters William Wallace Wotherspoon and James Hart and his brother William in New York, and by 1855 she had begun exhibiting sketches. However, it was only when Greatorex was widowed in 1858 that she was able to pursue art full time, and she subsequently supported herself and her children through sales of her art and through teaching for 15 years at a girls' school.

In 1861-62, she studied with the painter Émile Lambinet outside Paris. In 1870, she traveled to Germany with her daughters and they studied at the Pinakothek in Munich. In 1879, dissatisfied with commercial reproductions of her work, she went to Paris to study engraving with Charles Henri Toussaint. From then on, she and her daughters were based out of Paris.

Greatorex first became known as a landscape painter of the Hudson River School. She often worked en plein air, and her landscapes reflect her careful observation of her environment. Her best-known paintings are Vew on the Houstonic (1863), The Forge (1864), and Somerindyke House (1869). One series of paintings was executed on panels taken from specific churches; these include Bloomingdale Church and The North Dutch Church (painted on panels taken from the North Dutch Church on Fulton Street in New York City) and St. Paul's Church, painted on a panel taken from that church.

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