Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer


Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer was an American illustrator, painter, and printmaker known for her portrayals of Tennessee society women and their children. As a printmaker, she pioneered the white-line woodcut.

Early life

Hergesheimer was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania on January 7, 1873. Her parents were Charles P. Hergesheimer and Ellamanda Ritter Hergesheimer. She was encouraged to create art in her childhood.
Hergesheimer was the great-great granddaughter of Philadelphia artist Charles Willson Peale, who named one of his daughters Sophonisba after the Italian artist, Sofonisba Anguissola. Hergesheimer chose to use Sophonisba as her first name.

Education

She studied at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women for two years, and then went on to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts for four years. At the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, she studied with Cecilia Beaux, Hugh Breckenridge, and William Merritt Chase. She was considered by Chase to be one of his finest students, and spent the summer of 1900 studying at Chase's Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art on Long Island. As a senior at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, she was judged the best pupil in her class and was awarded the Cresson Traveling Scholarship.
This allowed her to study abroad in Europe for three years, where she trained at the Académie Colarossi and exhibited at the Paris Salon. She is listed among the students of Blanche Lazzell, who was known for her white-line color woodcuts.

Career

As a result of having her work including in a 1905 traveling exhibition organized by the Nashville Art Association, she received a commission in 1907 to paint the portrait of Holland Nimmons McTyeire, the Methodist bishop who convinced Cornelius Vanderbilt to endow Vanderbilt University. To work on the commission, she relocated to Nashville, Tennessee, where she remained the rest of her life - first occupying a studio on Church Street, and later one at Eighth Avenue and Broadway. She spoke fondly of the region and its residents, stating: "The country around Nashville is, some of it, the most beautiful I have ever seen––a large and bounteous field for the landscape painter. There are hosts of beautiful women and children and strong, fine men to inspire great portraits."
She also conducted art classes in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where her circle of friends included fellow artists Frances Fowler, Sarah Peyton, and Wickliffe Covington. She also maintained a lifelong friendship with landscape painter Orlando Gray Wales, who also was raised in Allentown and also studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Hergesheimer's most notable portraits are those of Speaker of the House Joseph W. Byrns, Sr., which hangs in the United States Capitol building, and of Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury, which hangs in Maury Hall at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
Though portraiture was her primary source of income, Hergesheimer experimented in other painting genres and artistic techniques, including printmaking, which she pursued alongside the artist Blanche Lazzell.

Death

Hergesheimer died on June 24, 1943 in Davidson, Tennessee.

Awards

Some of the major collectors of Hergesheimer's work are: