Woodrow Wilson House will open a new exhibition, The Art of First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson: American Impressionist on September 2nd, 2010 just in time for Labor Day weekend. Celebrating the 150th anniversary of First Lady Ellen Wilson’s birth, this will be the first major retrospective of her works in nearly 20 years. Visitors will have the opportunity to see a selection of 18 impressionist landscapes painted by the first Mrs. Wilson, including five works which have not been on public display since the artist’s lifetime, four works recently acquired by Woodrow Wilson House, and five recently restored works.

The paintings selected for this exhibition span the years 1902-1913, from Ellen’s time at Princeton, during her husband’s presidency of Princeton University, to her summers at the artist’s colony at Old Lyme, Connecticut where she honed her skills as an artist, to Sea Girt, New Jersey where she painted during her husband’s governorship, to the White House summer retreat at Cornish, New Hampshire where she practiced her art with fellow artists, to the White House where she had a studio installed. The body of work Ellen left behind is valuable not only in documenting her skill as a developing artist, but also as a record of her life as a wife, mother, reformer, and First Lady. Heavily influenced by the popular American impressionist movement, Ellen’s work incorporates the themes, brushwork, color, solidity, and interest in plein-air painting that are hallmarks of the impressionist school. One of only a few female artists engaged in the movement at the time, Ellen showed remarkable talent as well as a willingness to balance her artistic career with her family and her duties as First Lady.

About Ellen Axson Wilson
Ellen Axson Wilson (1860-1914) was born in Savannah, Georgia, on May 15, 1860. From 1875 to 1878 she studied art with Helen F. Fairchild at the Female College in Rome, Georgia, where she was recognized for her artistic ability. In 1878, at the age of 18, Ellen won a bronze medal for freehand drawing at the Paris International Exposition and launched a promising career as a professional artist. In 1883 she became engaged to Woodrow Wilson. While he was in his second year of graduate work in political science at Johns Hopkins University, she enrolled at the Art Students League in New York where she studied under leading American artists of the day, including George de Forest Brush, Thomas W. Dewing, Frederick Warren Freer, and Julian Alden Weir.

After their marriage in June 1885, Ellen immersed herself in establishing a home and raising a family. As her three daughters grew, she gradually began to paint more and more. In the summer of 1905 she studied at the artist’s colony at Old Lyme, Connecticut. She returned to Old Lyme in the summers of 1908, 1909, 1910, and 1911. Among her fellow artists there were Childe Hassam, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Walter Griffin, William Chadwick, Chauncey Foster Ryder, William S. Robinson, and Robert Vonnoh.

In November 1911 Ellen entered one of her canvases under an assumed name to be judged for an exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery in New York. When Ellen revealed her identity to the gallery’s owner, William Macbeth, he encouraged her to enter more works, acting as her agent and advocate. After several successes, in March 1913, shortly before the presidential inaugural ceremonies, a one-woman show of fifty of Ellen’s landscapes opened in Philadelphia.

In the summer of 1913 First Lady Ellen Wilson and her three daughters spent three months at “Harlakenden,” a privately owned estate near Cornish, New Hampshire. The beauty and privacy of the New Hampshire hills inspired a burst of creative energy that enabled Ellen to paint almost every day. Cornish had a distinguished group of resident artists, among whom were Kenyon Cox, Maxfield Parrish, Anetta Johnson Saint-Gaudens, Adeline Valentine Pond Adams and her sculptor-husband Herbert, Ellen’s former teacher at the Art Students league George de Forest Brush, and Robert Vonnoh and his sculptor-wife Bessie.

When Ellen returned to Washington in the fall of 1913, she planned to use the studio that had been installed for her in the process of a major renovation of the third floor of the White House. The demands of social duties, however, took precedence over her art. In the spring of 1914 Ellen was diagnosed with Bright’s disease, a chronic ailment of the kidneys. She died in the White House on August 6, 1914, and was buried beside her parents in Rome, Georgia.

Ellen Wilson set a precedent for First Ladies to use their influence in causes of humanitarian need. She pushed for improved working conditions for women and was deeply involved in trying to eradicate the segregated alley slums in Washington, DC. She advocated education for women and used the proceeds from the sale of her art paintings to establish a scholarship at the Martha Berry School in Rome, Georgia for needy girls and boys.

The exhibition, The Art of First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson: American Impressionist, will run from September 2nd, 2010 to April 10, 2011.