Kate Freeman Clark

Kate Freeman Clark (September 3, 1875 – March 3, 1957) was an American painter born in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

Clark was the daughter of Edward Clark, an attorney in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Cary Freeman Clark, whose great-uncle was Edward Cary Walthall. An only child, she was named for her grandmother, and was called "Little Kate" to distinguish her from "Mama Kate". Soon after her birth her father purchased a plantation which would later become the centerpiece of the town of Cary, named for his wife. Kate and her mother summered in Holly Springs, where the air was considered cleaner than along the Mississippi Delta, and Edward would write his daughter long letters during these absences.

Edward Clark died of pneumonia in 1885, soon after being named assistant to L. Q. C. Lamar, Edward Walthall's former law partner who had been named Grover Cleveland's Secretary of the Interior. At his death Kate and her mother moved to Freeman Place in Holly Springs, which had been the Walthall family residence. The family soon moved to New York City, where Kate attended finishing school at the Gardiner School, from which she graduated in 1891. In 1893 the two went to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which fired in the young woman a passion for art. Upon returning to New York City, she enrolled in the Art Students League in 1895; there she studied drawing with John Henry Twachtman and watercolor with Irving Ramsay Wiles. It was Wiles who introduced her to William Merritt Chase, who would teach her still-life painting and would serve as her mentor until his death in 1916. Chase respected her work highly, choosing two of her paintings for his personal collection. Clark and her mother summered on eastern Long Island during the late 1890s; Cary also traveled to Washington, D.C. for the social season there in 1896, in which year Kate attended classes at the Corcoran School of Art. She also attended the New York School of Art and the Shinnecock School of Art; she would remain in New York for the winters while traveling to resort areas in Vermont and Connecticut in summers.

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