Honorary Members

CLWAC Honorary Members

These are outstanding professional artists who were invited to be Honorary Members of the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club. Most of them had already exhibited with the Club, some had worked for CLWAC for many years, and all continued to participate in the exhibitions as Honorary Members.

Sally Swan Carr and Carey Boone Nelson

These two women were each President of CLWAC before being named Honorary Members. Their biographies are in the section on Presidents, page 39 and page 41.

Florence Julia Bach

Florence Julia Bach, 1887-1978

Florence Julia Bach was a native of Buffalo, New York, where she began her studies at the Albright Art Gallery. She later studied with William Merritt Chase and Frank Vincent DuMond at the Art Students League in New York City. After traveling to France and working with sculptor Louis Lejeune, she returned to Buffalo, where she was active for many years. She was twice the President of the Buffalo Society of Artists and was associated with the Albright Art Gallery and the Buffalo School of Fine Arts. Bach was both a painter and a sculptor. Her widely exhibited work received many awards. In New York she was an active member of the Grand Central Galleries, having a solo exhibition there. In addition, she was a Member of the National Association of Women Artists, as well as CLWAC.

Elizabeth Gordon Chandler

Elizabeth Gordon Chandler, 1913-2006

Elizabeth Gordon Chandler was an internationally known sculptor in bronze. She founded the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, in Connecticut, where together with her sculptor husband, Laci de Gerenday, and a professional staff she continued to teach into her eighties. Born in St. Louis, she was educated in New York, studying sculpture with Edmondo Quattrocchi and anatomy with Robert Beverly Hale at the Art Students League.

Her work included sculptures of many well-known Americans: Chief Justices Charles Evans Hughes and Harlan Fisk Stone, at the Columbia University Law School; Adlai Stevenson, at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton; the first Chief Justice, John Jay, at the Pace University School of Law, among many others. A life-size bronze relief of “St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, Patroness of Immigrants,” is in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City. Chandler was a National Academician, as well as a Fellow of the National Sculpture Society, and a member of many other art organizations. She was the recipient of numerous awards.

From her early years as a sculptor Elizabeth greatly admired Anna Hyatt Huntington and kept in close touch with her. They probably shared the standard for the creation of art based on nature that Elizabeth expressed in a 1995 letter of support to CLWAC: “This will be an art form that communicate[s] the inner thoughts and feelings of the artist to the viewer –- not one that relies on the viewer’s imagination for understanding.”

In addition to her sculptural accomplishments, Elizabeth was a concert harpist. For her many years of commitment to her community, the Town of Old Lyme, named her Citizen of the Year in 1985.

Madame Chiang Kai-shek, 1897-2003

Madame Chiang Kai-shek was known around the world as the wife of China’s Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek. But she was an extraordinary woman in her own right and a well-known and accomplished watercolorist. Born in Shanghai into the established Soong banking family, Mai-Ling Soong was educated at Wellesley College. There she was in the class with Sara Metzner Boal, a future President of CLWAC. They became good friends, and Sara renewed their connection after 1949, meeting with Madame Chiang on Taiwan. It was through this personal association that CLWAC recognized her artistic achievements and invited her to become an Honorary Member. Later, Sara arranged for Carey Boone Nelson to meet with Madame Chiang when the Nelsons were traveling in the Far East in 1969. Madame Chiang was eager to learn from Carey more about CLWAC, and that meeting in Taipei led to a 35-year friendship.

Over the 30 years that Madame Chiang exhibited a new painting in each Annual Open Exhibition, Carey arranged for the painting’s delivery, and each year Madame Chiang made a special effort to come to the National Arts Club to view the Exhibition at a time when there were not crowds and she could spend time to view all the works, stop, and appraise many of them, including the sculptures in the lower galleries.

She was honored in the catalog for the 76th Annual Open Exhibition, in 1972, where it was noted: “The beautiful landscape on display was painted for this exhibit; the delicacy and charm of her watercolor handling are the unique qualities which make her an outstanding master of this medium.”

Madame Chiang Kai-shek

Mr. Chen Che, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Carey Boone Nelson and Aldon James at the 1996 CLWAC Centennial Exhibition

Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, 1880-1980

Born in Philadelphia, Harriet Whitney Frishmuth received her early education there, but by the age of nineteen she was in Paris studying with Rodin, as well as Gauquier and Injalbert. She first exhibited in Paris at the 1903 Salon. And from 1902 to 1904 she was an assistant to Professor Cuno von Euchtritz in Berlin. After returning to America, she studied with Gutzon Borglum at the Art Students League, where she won the St. Gaudens Prize.

Harriet very early became known for her lyrical figures, the form she maintained throughout her long career. In tapes she made for Syracuse University in 1964 she remarked: “Eccentricity and caprice are no substitute for style and mastery in modeling. Beauty is everywhere in this world.” Her early recognition led to many medals and honors too numerous to list here, but her work is represented in museums throughout the country. Her sculpture, “The Vine,” exhibited at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York, is now at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, along with the “Slavic Dancer.” Other museums featuring her work include: the Museum of Fine Arts, Dayton; the John Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis, and the Museum of Art, Dallas. In addition, she is represented in Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina. In 1984 Syracuse University asked for all of her plaster casts, drawings, and memorabilia for its archives on American art.

She was a National Academician, a Fellow of the National Sculpture Society, a Life Member of the National Arts Club, and a member of the Architectural League.

The Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, for whose values and standards Harriet expressed proud support, honored her on several occasions. The Club’s exhibition at Lever House in 1966 displayed seven of her sculptures, with the catalog dedicated to her. In 1975, at the time of her 95th birthday, CLWAC again honored her, at the 79th Annual Open Exhibition, where several of her works were shown and she was featured in the catalog. She continues to be remembered every year with the presentation of two sculpture awards carrying her name.

Harriet Whitney Frishmuth

Born in Denver, Colorado, Katherine began studying painting at age nine but soon turned to sculpture, producing her first piece when she was sixteen. However, she did not initially embark on a career in art, instead traveling to Germany to study law at universities in Leipzig, Konigsberg, and Goettingen. Despite these formal studies, she found herself drawn to sculpture and abandoned law in its favor. Married to a university professor, she lived in the intellectual community in Goettingen until events in Germany in the 1930s made it advisable for her to return to America. Divorced, she remarried briefly but soon recognized that her creative spirit thrived when she was free, and she devoted the rest of her life to sculpture and to poetry.

Katherine’s work was exhibited in shows ranging from Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, and Paris to New York. Major sculptures were installed in Goettingen, Dresden, and Paris; an eight-foot war memorial is at St. James Episcopal Church in New York. She received numerous awards and participated in many art organizations, including the National Arts Club, American Artists Professional League, Pen and Brush, American Artists Society, and Allied Artists of America, serving on the boards of many of these groups. Some of her poetry was published, and she was a member of the Poetry Society and the American Catholic Poetry Society.

CLWAC honored her in 1981 at the 85th Annual Open Exhibition, when at the age of 92 she had four pieces of sculpture on view and was pleased to be able to attend both the Reception and the Dinner.

Katherine Thayer Hobson

Malvina Hoffman, 1885-1966

Malvina Hoffman A native of New York City, Malvina Hoffman began her art studies with painting, but soon discovered that sculpture was her true inspiration and turned to George Gray Barnard and Gutzon Borglum for instruction. By 1910 she was in Paris, working in Rodin’s studio. In her autobiography, Head and Tales, she describes how she persuaded Rodin to accept her and how the Yugoslavian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic urged her to become a better technician than men. Following his advice she learned how to rebuild tools, bend iron, saw wood, and work with plumbing pipes. On many visits to foundries she observed how to chase and finish bronzes.

The commission that contributed most to her reputation was a five-year project for the Field Museum in Chicago for which she was asked to sculpt more than 100 pieces for the Races of Man Exhibition. This necessitated traveling around the globe, studying as many native people as she could manage. The project was completed in time to be a significant feature at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago.

Hoffman won numerous medals, including the National Sculpture Society’s Gold Medal. She was a National Academician and Chevalier of the Legion of Honor (France). Her work is in many museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, the Imperial War Museum (London), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Paris). In addition to her autobiography, Hoffman wrote two other books: Sculpture Inside Out, and Yesterday Is Tomorrow.

Malvina Hoffman participated in CLWAC exhibitions for many years and in 1966 was specially honored at the Club’s Members’ Show at the New York Bank for Savings.

“God’s Gift to Women,” Bronze

Courtesy the Chicago Field Museum

Anna Hyatt Huntington, 1876-1973

Anna Hyatt Huntington was perhaps the most well-known woman artist in America for many years before she became actively involved with the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club. Her fame spread to many countries, including France, Spain, and Italy, with her work represented in more than 200 museums. Her sculpture “Winter,” of two work horses, created in 1903, is included in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She received too many honors to list them all. But she was the first woman sculptor to be admitted to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, from which she received the Gold Medal. The Pennsylvania Academy also awarded her the Gold Medal. From the National Sculpture Society she received both the President’s Medal and the Medal of Honor. France honored her with the Palmes Academics and Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she spent much of her childhood on the family’s farm in Annisquam, where she developed an early love for and understanding of animals. Her first sculpture, of a Great Dane done at the age of thirteen, was exhibited in the CLWAC Annual Exhibition in 1966. The catalog that year was dedicated to her in honor of her 90th birthday. While still a teenager she created many animal sculptures which she exhibited and sold in various Boston locations, having her first one-person show in 1902 at the Boston Art Club. Moving to New York, she studied at the Art Students League and privately with Gutzon Borglum and H. A. McNeil. A few years later, her reputation already growing and finding herself financially independent, she moved to Paris where, surrounded by the artistic stimulus of that city, she created single-handedly her first heroic sculpture, “Joan of Arc,” mounted on her horse. The life-size plaster cast she entered in the Salon in 1910 won Honorable Mention, a remarkable achievement for a woman and a foreigner. By the time she returned to America her reputation was well established. A bronze casting of the “Joan of Arc” was installed in 1915 at Riverside Drive and 93rd Street, where it stands today.

It was through her art that she met Archer Huntington, a wealthy philanthropist and patron of the arts with a particular interest in Spanish culture, who commissioned her to create a medal for the Hispanic Society of the Americas, an institution he had founded, at Audubon Terrace in New York City. When in 1923 he first asked her to marry him, she was reluctant to give up the independent career she had enjoyed for nearly 25 years. But he proved supportive of her work, and she of his many endeavors in encouraging the arts and women in the arts. She sculpted several monumental works for the Hispanic Society to which Archer had contributed so much, and together they created Brookgreen Gardens for American Sculpture in South Carolina.

Anna Hyatt Huntington

Mrs. Huntington on the occasion of her 90th birthday

Mrs. Huntington holding CLWAC Horse’s Head Award with Sally Swan Carr

“Joan of Arc,” installed in 1915 on Riverside Drive at 93rd Street, in New York City

“Don Quixote,” situated on the plaza of the Hispanic Society in New York City Anna suffered some episodes of tuberculosis and, in searching for good treatments and a suitable climate, the Huntingtons settled for a while in South Carolina. Archer thought of creating a garden to exhibit Anna’s sculpture on the large plantation site he had purchased. But together they turned the property into a marvelous landscape in which to install work by many other contemporary American sculptors, the nation’s first sculpture garden, now comprising more than 500 pieces.

In the 1940s they moved to Bethel, Connecticut, where they remained for the rest of their lives, Archer dying in 1955 and Anna in 1973. There she had a large studio, creating innumerable sculptures, 72 of them after Archer died. Many were large equestrian monuments, the last of these, “General Israel Putnam,” showing the Revolutionary War General riding his horse down a flight of steps. She completed it when she was 91. One of the exceptional facets of Anna’s work is the extent to which she insisted on keeping a hands-on connection with all her pieces, from the initial clay maquettes to the armatures she constructed herself on through many subsequent stages of enlargements, making adjustments in clay on every new model. This intimate involvement with the entire process no doubt underlies the living quality of her sculpture.

The earliest record of Anna Hyatt Huntington exhibiting with CLWAC is the Annual Open in 1954, the first at the National Arts Club. But from the time she was invited to become an Honorary Member in the early 1960s she gave generously and warmly to the Club, creating the Horse’s Head Award to be presented at the annual Members’ Shows, and made available a number of small works to be cast and sold at CLWAC exhibitions, the proceeds to be used to fund awards. These awards are still given in her name, along with the Medal created by Sally Swan Carr in her honor. The 1973 CLWAC catalog was dedicated to her. Those who were fortunate to know her remembered her, in Sally Swan Carr’s words, as having a “...beautiful spirit and a wonderful sense of humor....Her spirit will live in our hearts and in her work to inspire future generations.”

Diana Kan, 1926-2010

Diana Kan had a distinguished career for many years. Her book, The How and Why of Chinese Painting, has become a standard fixture in college art courses, and she conducted workshops in various parts of the country. In 2005 she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Medal of Honor by the National Arts Club.

Born in Hong Kong, she studied calligraphy with her father, Kan Kam Shek, and painting with Chang Dai-Chien. She later worked with Robert Ward Johnson and Robert Beverly Hale at the Art Students League in New York, and with Paul Lavelle at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Her work won acclaim throughout the world, earning her many awards and solo exhibitions. Her paintings are in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, the Elliott Museum in Stuart, Florida, and the National Historical Museum in Taiwan.

Diana was an Associate Member of the National Academy of Design and an active member of many art organizations, including the American Watercolor Society, Allied Artists of America, Audubon Artists, and the National Arts Club, and was a Life Member of the Art Students League.

Diana Kan

“September Song,” Watercolor, 1998

Courtesy of The Salmagundi Club

Ethel Paxon

Ethel Paxon, 1885-1982

Ethel Paxon was one of America’s earliest recognized Impressionist landscape painters. Over a long creative life which continued until two years before her death at age 97, she completed 2,000 works.

Her early studies were at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with William Merritt Chase, Cecilia Beaux, and Henry Rankin Poor. A four-year visit to Brazil with her husband, beginning in 1916, led to the creation of a remarkable series of landscapes, some considered to be the first impressionistic views of Rio de Janeiro. These works were featured in a traveling exhibition that started in New York and ended in Brasilia.

After returning to the United States, Ethel resumed an active life teaching as well as painting. For many years she taught in Vermont, Connecticut, Long Island, and in New York City’s Central Park under Mayor LaGuardia’s “Vacation at Home” program. She was also a frequent and popular lecturer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection, and the Museum of Modern Art. Her work is represented in The Metropolitan and many other museums.

Ethel was active with CLWAC, serving on the Board, and was made an Honorary Member in 1974.

Brenda Putnam, 1890-1975

Brenda Putnam came from Minnesota, began her art studies at the age of fifteen at the Boston Museum Art School, then moved to New York two years later to study at the Art Students League. After her father was named Librarian at the Library of Congress, she undertook study at the Corcoran Art School. From the time she first exhibited her work in 1910 she had a successful career, establishing a studio in Greenwich Village. She became a close friend of Anna Hyatt Huntington and was one of the few guests at Anna’s wedding. Her early work was largely in the Renaissance tradition, creating fountains and sundials. Despite winning a number of prizes she became dissatisfied with this style. After spending some time in Florence, Italy, she returned to America, where she encountered the work of Archipenko and found it impressive. Though not moved to adopt Cubism, she was stimulated to develop more simplified forms while continuing to work in the classical mold.

This transition proved successful. In 1936 she was elected to full membership in the National Academy of Design, where she won the Watrous Gold Medal. She also became a Member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the National Sculpture Society, the National Association of Women Artists, and the National Arts Club. After many years of teaching and dedication to encouraging young women sculptors, in 1939 she published her book, The Sculptor’s Way, on the techniques of sculpture.

Brenda was awarded many medals and prizes and her work is in a number of museums, among them: the Museum at the Hispanic Society of the Americas, New York; The Folger Library, Washington, D. C.; the Dallas Museum; Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina, and the American Hall of Fame, New York. Her sculpture, “A Memorial to the Women of Virginia,” is in Lynchburg. The Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club honored her at its 76th Annual Open Exhibition in 1972, and the catalog was dedicated to her memory in 1976.

Brenda Putnam

Priscilla Roberts

Original self-portrait in the Smithsonian Institution

Priscilla Roberts, 1916 -2001

Priscilla Roberts grew up in New York City, where she had moved with her family at an early age from New Jersey. Her mother was a talented amateur painter whose only form of instruction was to allow her daughter to “play with her brushes.” Priscilla developed an early love of art that she carried through life. She wrote in a 1995 letter to CLWAC that though she worked hard for many, many years at her painting, she never regarded it as work –- she always loved it so. But she did not begin serious art studies until 1937, when she worked at the Art Students League with Charles Courtenay Curran, Sidney Dickinson, and Frank Vincent DuMond. Later she transferred to the National Academy, where she studied until 1943. She was elected a National Academician in 1957.

Painting in oil, she was a master of carefully worked still lifes, strongly influenced by Vermeer, as she acknowledged in a publication of the Grand Central Galleries at the time of a 1981 retrospective there entitled “Magic Realist.” When she saw Vermeer’s “Maid Servant Pouring Milk” at the 1940 World’s Fair in New York, she found his use of light a stunning revelation. It is a quality that appears constantly in her exquisitely wrought paintings.

Although she lived a very secluded life, totally devoted to painting, she received wide recognition and many awards. Three of her paintings are in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other works are in the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, The Butler Institute of American Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and many private collections.

Margery Ryerson, 1886-1989

Margery Ryerson was born in Morristown, New Jersey. Her father was a prominent lawyer and her mother a sculptor who had studied with Augustus St. Gaudens and who was one of the founders of the Art Students League. Margery graduated from Vassar in 1909 with a degree in mathematics. After continuing her studies at Columbia, she began a brief career teaching math, which enabled her to help support her mother after her father’s death. She and her mother spent many summers on Cape Cod, where Margery studied painting with Charles Hawthorne. He encouaged her to pursue studies at the Art Students League under Robert Henri.

This proved to be a major step in her life. Henri’s emphasis on painting spontaneously from life and his opposition to the narrowly academic inspired her, as it did many of his students. She became seriously engaged with his view of art and mode of teaching. After several years in his class, she helped him collect his papers and lecture notes and assisted him in editing these materials to form his book, The Spirit of Art, published in 1923. The book had a lasting influence. Adopting Henri’s philosophy, she frequently painted strong portraits of working class men, women, and children. Over many years she found numerous subjects in the music classes of Lenox Hill Settlement, where she sometimes had the satisfaction of painting the children and grandchildren of the prior generation. In later years she also assisted Charles Hawthorne’s widow in organizing his papers for the book, Hawthorne on Painting, published in 1938.

Versatile in many media, Margery worked in oil and watercolor and was elected a National Academician through her etchings. Later in life she was distinguished as a watercolorist and lithographer, winning innumerable awards and medals. Her work is in many museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the Uffizi Gallery (Florence), and the Biblioteque Nationale (Paris). She was for a long time associated with the Grand Central Gallery in New York, which mounted a Centennial Exhibition of her work in 1986, and was a member of the National Arts Club, where she lived and had her studio for many years.

Robert Henri class at The Art Students League, 1915 Margery Ryerson far right in second row

Eleanor C. Segur, 1923-1998

“Untitled,” Watercolor by Eleanor Segur

Eleanor Segur, born in Toledo, Ohio, came to New York to study at Pratt Institute where she obtained a degree. For several years she had a successful career as an illustrator, draftsman, and designer. However, her interest in watercolor led her to join classes and tours with Edgar Whitney, Carl Molno, and Daniel Greene.

Painting was absorbing and satisfying, but Eleanor found added stimulus in teaching students with similar interests. Her classes were warmly received and quickly grew from an initial group of four to two hundred students when she taught at the New York Botanical Gardens, the Craft Students League (YWCA), and the National Art League. In addition, her frequent demonstrations and lectures at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Academy of Design were popular. In 1974 she published The Watercolor Workbook, a manual dedicated to her students “In grateful recognition of their loyalty and enthusiasm.” It was twice reprinted.

Eleanor won over forty watercolor awards and was elected to membership in the National Arts Club, the National Art League, Hudson Valley Art Association, Island Art Guild, and other organizations. She was active in CLWAC, which made her an Honorary Member in 1989.

Katharine Lane Weems, 1899-1989

Katharine Lane Weems was a renowned sculptor of animals. A native of Boston, she began her art studies there at the Museum of Fine Arts and with Charles Grafly. In New York Anna Hyatt Huntington invited her to work in the studio she shared with Brenda Putnam, giving Weems the encouragement and support of two highly recognized professional women sculptors. She soon gained her own professional status, winning in 1926 the Bronze Medal at the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial and the Widner Gold Medal at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1930 Katharine made a film, From Clay to Bronze, with Harvard University and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and in 1933 she created a series of carvings for the entrance to Harvard’s Institute of Biology. These relief panels, depicting 33 animals and showing the distribution of animals around the world, were carved directly into the brick with a pneumatic drill. She also sculpted two twelve-foot-long rhinoceroses to flank the doors. The Weems Gallery in the Museum of Science in Boston contains 40 of her small animal sculptures and a room of her brilliant graphics complementing her sculptures. In 1987 the Boston Museum established the Katharine Lane Weems Gallery in Decorative Arts.

In 1939 Katharine was elected to the National Academy and in 1966 was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Merit de France. Her memberships included the National Sculpture Society, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Architectural League, and the American Artists Professional League.

Katharine Lane Weems