Queer Places:
The Art Students League of New York, 215 W 57th St, New York, NY 10019
Académie Julian, Paris, France
East Cemetery
Manchester, Hartford County, Connecticut, USA
Alice
Beckington (July 30, 1868 – January 4, 1942) was an American painter.
Two or three years before
Inez Haynes Irwin
arrived to Scituate a group of women artists became summer residents. They had
been studying and painting in France and when they sought summer homes they
decided to settle in Scituate. First they hired cottages, later they bought.
This group included two sisters, Josephine
Lewis and Matilda Lewis, Theodora Thayer,
Mabel Stuart and
Alice Beckington. Josephine Lewis, the most successful of
them all, became a portrait painter. In many of the Scituate homes today hang
portraits of little boys and girls painted by her. Her work was influenced by
Renoir. Thayer and Alice Beckington specialized in miniatures.
Born in St. Charles, Missouri, Beckington studied art at the Art Students
League of New York, where she was a pupil of J. Carroll Beckwith;[1] she
also studied for a month with Kenyon Cox. She next traveled to Paris for study
at the Académie Julian, where her instructors included Jules Joseph
Lefebvre and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, and taking lessons with Charles
Lasar at his studio.[2][3] She
had exhibitions at Paris Salons and Paris Expositions through 1900, including
the Salon du Champ de Mars.[3][4] Upon
returning to the United States, Beckington began exhibiting work in venues
including the Pan-American Exposition, where she received an honorable
mention, Louisiana Purchase Exposition, where she received a bronze medal, and
Poland Spring Exhibition.[1][3][5][6]
She was a founder member of the American Society of Miniature Painters, of
which organization she served as president for a number of years, and from
1905 to 1916 she taught miniature painting at the Art Students League.[2] She
was also a member, during her career, of the American Federation of Arts and
the Pennsylvania Society of Miniature Painters.[1] Beckington
was among the women artists, including Theodora Thayer,
Thomas Meteyard, sisters Matilda Lewis and Josephine
Lewis, and Mabel Stuart who
began summering at Scituate, Massachusetts around the turn of the century,
founding a small artistic colony.[2][7] During
this time she also spent time with notable feminist author Inez Haynes Irwin,
and she and Thayer both painted portraits of Irwin that were exhibited in
the Knoedler Gallery.[7] In
1935, she was awarded the medal of honor by the Brooklyn Society of Miniature
Painters.[3]
A portrait by Beckington of her pupil Rosina Cox Boardman is currently in the
collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.[8] Three
portraits, including one of her mother, are owned by the Metropolitan Museum
of Art.[9]
Alice Beckington, Rosina Cox Boardman, 1914, watercolor on ivory, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the American Society of Miniature Painters, 1965.30.7
My published books:
BACK TO HOME PAGE
