Ida Isabella Poteat

Ida Isabella Poteat (December 15, 1858 – February 1, 1940) was an American artist and instructor.

Poteat was born at Forest Home in Caswell County, near the community of Yanceyville. She was the daughter of James and Julia A. McNeill Poteat; her siblings included William Louis Poteat, and through her niece Helen she was for a time the aunt-in-law of Laurence Stallings. She was also the great-aunt of philosopher William H. Poteat. Her early education came in local schools before she went to the Raleigh Female Seminary. She then traveled to New York City, studying at the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts and the Cooper Union and having lessons at the School of Applied Design in Philadelphia. She was a private pupil of William Merritt Chase, and also studied with Robert Henri, Charles Parsons, and Louis Mounier during her career. She also spent several summers abroad, studying at various times in London, Florence, Venice, and Carcassonne.

Poteat first worked at the Oxford Seminary in Oxford, North Carolina, but she joined the faculty of the Baptist Female University, today Meredith College, in Raleigh upon its opening on September 27, 1899. She remained there until her death over forty years later. She turned the art department into one of the most highly-regarded in the southern United States, modeling its curriculum on those of schools in New York, Philadelphia, and Paris. Among her pupils at Meredith was painter Francis Speight; others include Mary Tillery, Ethel Parrot Hughes, Lucy Sanders Hood, Mrs. Herbert Peele, Heslope Purefoy, Dorothy Horne Decker, and Effie Raye Calhoun Bateman Goff. Poteat designed costumes for the faculty's quadrennial production of Alice in Wonderland; she also designed the university seal, adopted in 1909.

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