Helen Mary Knowlton
| Helen M. Knowton | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Helen Mary Knowlton August 16, 1832 Littleton, Massachusetts |
| Died | May 5, 1918 (aged 85) Needham, Massachusetts |
| Resting place |
Rural Cemetery, Worcester, Massachusetts 42°16′51.29″N 71°48′7.08″W / 42.2809139°N 71.8019667°WCoordinates: 42°16′51.29″N 71°48′7.08″W / 42.2809139°N 71.8019667°W |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | William Morris Hunt |
| Known for | Painter and educator |
Helen M. Knowlton (1832-1918) was an American artist, art instructor and author. She taught in Boston from 1871 until the mid-1910s, when she was in her 70s. Her instructor and later employer, William Morris Hunt, was the subject of a portrait she made and several books; She is considered his principal biographer.
Helen Mary Knowlton was born on August 16, 1832 in Littleton, Massachusetts, the second of nine children born to J.S.C and Anna W. Knowlton.
She was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts and attended private and public schools. Beginning in 1834, her father owned and ran the Worcester Palladium. He died in 1871 and after that the three Knowlton sisters ran the paper for a number of years.
For four years, beginning in 1865, she gave guitar lessons.
She studied under the supervision of artist and teacher William Morris Hunt, who had an "experimental approach" towards art, starting in 1868. Hunt began classes for women after she let him know of 40 women interested in studying art.
Despite criticism from those who thought he was wasting his time, Hunt offered his female students technical skills, inspiration, and a sense of self-worth. His efforts lived on through his pupil Helen Knowlton (1832–1918), who used his methods in her own classes for many years. Hunt empowered these early women artists, but Knowlton maintained their circle of support and friendship.
In the 1880s she studied under Frank Duveneck in Munich, Germany.
In the summer of 1881 Knowlton was Duveneck's student in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he held art classes "between trips to Europe." She wrote later of the time, having said "East Gloucester was never so full of artists, and was getting to be called the Brittany of America." In 1881 and 1882, Knowlton traveled through Italy, France, Belgium and the Netherlands with Ellen Day Hale, who was her student in 1874; also along for part of the journey was Hale's distant cousin, the painter Margaret Lesley Bush-Brown.
In Boston, Knowlton was a painter, educator, author, and art critic for the Boston Post and another paper in Boston. She was a painter, art critic, and teacher into her 70s, about mid-1910s.
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