Elsie Lower Pomeroy
| Elsie Lower Pomeroy | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Elsie E. Lower September 30, 1882 New Castle, Pennsylvania |
| Died | 1971 Mill Valley, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Corcoran School of Art |
| Known for | oil painting, watercolor, botanical illustrations |
| Movement | American Scene Painting |
Elsie Lower Pomeroy (1882-1971) was an artist most closely associated with the American Scene Painting movement and specifically California Regionalism or California Scene Painting. She was also one of a small group of botanical illustrators who worked for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in the early 20th century.
Elsie E. Lower was born September 30, 1882 in New Castle, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Cyrus B. Lower, a decorated Union Army American Civil War veteran and Medal of Honor recipient. She grew up in Washington D.C. and graduated from the Corcoran School of Art in the early 1900s.
By 1908, she was working as an artist for the USDA, drawing botanical illustrations for the USDA yearbooks. She was one of a select cohort of botanical illustrators working for the USDA at this time, among whom were also Deborah Griscom Passmore, Ellen Isham Schutt, Royal Charles Steadman, and Amanda Newton. She painted over 280 watercolors for the USDA, including both common fruits such as citrus, apples, and strawberries, and less common fruits such as cherimoyas. The 1908 USDA yearbook contained two of her images, including the Augbert peach (pg. 479) and Kawakami and Lonestar persimmons (pg. 484). The 1909 USDA yearbook contained two of her images, including an ear of corn (pg. 335) and the Diploma currant (pg. 414). Unlike most of her USDA colleagues, she would go on to have a career as an exhibiting artist after she left the service.
In 1911, she married Carl Stone Pomeroy, a young pomologist at the USDA. By 1913, the couple had moved to Riverside, California, where Carl joined the Citrus Experiment Station and helped to develop the navel orange/citrus industry in Southern California.
While in Riverside, she began studies and friendships with Millard Sheets, Phil Dike, and Eliot O'Hara and was a member of the Riverside Art Association. During this time, she completed a series of four watercolors about the citrus industry in Riverside. These paintings were exhibited throughout the United States, won numerous awards, and are currently in the permanent collection at the University of California at Riverside. In 1935, she went to Washington, D.C., where she was employed as a botanical artist for several months by the U.S. Forestry Service. It was during this trip that she did studies for her painting "Melting Snow", which is now in the collection of the Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio.
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