Sarah Wyman Whitman

Sarah Wyman Whitman
Sarah Wyman Whitman, painting by Helen Bigelow Merriman, 1909–10
Born	Sarah de St. Prix Wyman 1842 Lowell, Massachusetts
Died	1904 (aged 61 or 62) South Berwick, Maine
Nationality	American
Known for	Illustrator, stained glass designer, author
Style	Arts and Crafts
Spouse(s)	Henry Whitman
Awards	Bronze medal, 1901 Pan-American Exposition

Sarah de St. Prix Wyman Whitman (1842–1904) was an American stained glass artist, painter, and book cover designer. Successful at a time when few women had professional art careers, she founded her own firm, Lily Glass Works. Her stained glass windows are found in churches and colleges throughout the northeastern United States. As a member of the board of the Harvard University "Annex," she helped to found Radcliffe College.

Sarah de St. Prix Wyman was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1842 to banker William Wyman and Sarah Amanda (Treat) Wyman. She had one brother, Charles (1845-1911), who suffered from mental illness and was institutionalized in about 1882. By her third birthday, in the aftermath of her father's involvement in a bank scandal, the family had moved her to Baltimore, Maryland, where she spent most of her childhood with her wealthy Wyman relatives. When she turned 11, in 1853, she moved back to Lowell, where she was educated by tutors.

At the age of 24, she married Henry Whitman, a well-to-do wool and dry goods merchant. They hosted a literary club in their townhouse on Boston's Beacon Hill and summered in Beverly Farms, then an exclusive section of Boston's North Shore. The writer George Santayana described her as one of Boston's two "leading ladies" in the early 20th century, with the other being Isabella Stewart Gardner, for whom Whitman designed the carved sign over the entrance to her house, now a museum.

Whitman's artistic training was rather short. She began her artistic training at the age of 26 in Boston with William Morris Hunt and William Rimmer (1869-1871), one of their earliest women students. In 1877 she made the first of two trips to France to study with Thomas Couture at Villiers-le-Bel. Despite the fact that she never completed the French course of training that was considered necessary for an art career, within a decade she had established herself as a successful stained glass window designer, painter, and book cover designer.