Ethel Myers

Ethel Myers
Ethel Myers, 1908
Born	Lillian Cochran (1881-08-23)August 23, 1881 Brooklyn, New York
Died	May 24, 1960(1960-05-24) (aged 78) Cornwall, New York
Nationality	American
Education	The Chase School, New York School of Art
Known for	Sculpture, Drawings, Paintings, Entrepreneur, Fashion Designer, Educator, Lecturer
Notable work	The Matron, The Gambler (Joe Johnson), Florence Reed, Encounter, Ambulance Call
Spouse(s)	Jerome Myers

Mae Ethel Klinck Myers (August 23, 1881 - May 24, 1960) better known as Ethel Myers was a New York Realist artist and sculptor strongly influenced in her work by the goals of the Ashcan School and its leader and famous teacher, Robert Henri. Her earliest subjects for pictures involved her capturing the life of the Lower East Side as well as journeying to slums in other cities such as Boston. Her greatest fame came some years later, after her marriage to New York artist Jerome Myers, when she became known for her figurative bronze statuettes and figurines "with a quite uncommon sense of humor, and with more than this, a feeling for form and movement that gives them life and conviction." "Her three powerfully expressed sculptured figurines impress this reviewer with the fact that she is worthy of a place alongside of Daumier, Meunier and Mahonri Young."

Mae Ethel Klinck (first named Lillian Cochran) was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1881. Her 20-year-old mother was already seriously ill at the time of her birth and died when Ethel was 4 years old. Ethel's father was already dead and so she became an orphan. She was later adopted by Michael and Alfiata Klinck, an affluent couple who renamed her Mae Ethel Klinck. After the death of her husband, Alfiata and her daughter, moved between Brooklyn and Orange, N.J. which helped provide Ethel with a strong early education in both public and private schools. It was also her adoptive mother who encouraged Ethel to train on the piano in hopes of her becoming a concert pianist.

Ethel found her piano studies drudgery. "I decided I wanted to be a painter. I never had any other idea. So in my second year in the Newark high school I left and went to the National Academy in New York City, then on Twenty-Third Street. They sent me to Walter Satterlee, whose studio was in the old YMCA building across the street. After several months I took the examination at the Academy and failed. They sent word to me that if I would try again I would get in — but I said no — I have gone to the Chase School. There I became monitor of a class, and afterward became assistant director and teacher with John Douglas Connah, director. It was there that I was instrumental in getting Robert Henri in the school. It had then become the New York School of Art at Sixth Avenue and Fifty-Seventh Street."

Ethel studied at the Chase School (William Merritt Chase) and the New York School of Art from 1898 to 1904. A pet pupil of Chase, she also took the opportunity of studying with Henri, who would have a strong influence on her early art career. Among the others she attended classes with were Edward Hopper, Guy Pène du Bois, Gifford Beal, and Joseph Stella. She also became personally acquainted with the painters George Luks, John Sloan, William Glackens, Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson and Elmer Livingston MacRae.