Ethelwyn B Upton (1871-1920)
Birthplace/Origin: Queens, NY
Biography/Statement:
ETHELWYN B. UPTON (August 1871 – November 22, 1920)
Landscape and figure painter in oil and watercolor, teacher. Born in Flushing, Queens County Long Island, the daughter of Bertha Hudson (1848 – 1912) and Thomas Harborough Upton (1841 – 1889). Her father was employed as a confidential clerk for over twenty years with the American Exchange National Bank and the family resided in the Whitestone and later Bayside parts of Queens, Long Island.
The family was left nearly destitute by the sudden and early death of Thomas Upton. Like their father, who was an enthusiastic amateur artist, the Upton children gravitated towards the arts, and all of them would enter the field. Ethelwyn and her two sisters, Alice Upton (1875 – 1951) and Florence Kate Upton (1873 – 1922) – who along with her mother became widely celebrated for the “Golliwog” series of children’s books – were all successful artists in the early 20 th century, while the only son, Desmond (1880 – 1959) became an architect.
Ethelwyn Upton attended the Women’s Art School at Cooper Union and possibly the school associated with the National Academy or the Art Students League (where her sister Florence studied), all located in New York City. In 1893 her works and those of several of her fellow students at Cooper Union were selected for exhibition at the O’Brien Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana. This was followed later that year by the inclusion of her work at the Word’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. In December of 1897 she showed her work at the women’s art exhibition held at the Van Dyck Studio Clubroom on 56 th Street in Manhattan. This show was exclusively organized by and for women artists working in the Van Dyck studios.
Between 1900 and 1910 she traveled to Europe regularly, probably to study art, but definitely to visit with her sister Florence who had since relocated to London, returning to New York in the autumn of 1906 aboard the Teutonic. She traveled again to Great Britain a few years later,returning aboard the New York in the late summer of 1910. It is possible, as was noted by Florence’s biographer, that during the family’s time in Paris “… [like their sister Florence] … it is highly probable that both Alice and Ethelwyn also took art courses while they were in France.” Among the many places Ethelwyn visited in Europe with her sisters was the Franz Hals Museum in Haarlem, Netherlands.
By 1908, Upton’s works were being exhibited alongside a number of important American artists, such as Childe Hassam (1859 – 1935) and Robert Henri (1865 – 1929), at the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts exhibition in Minneapolis, Minnesota. That same year she was included in the “Exhibition of Paintings by Women Artists” held at the prestigious Knoedler’s Galleries in New York City (where she exhibited her work, “The Shadow”). A few years later, in 1909, her work was included at the exhibition of the Woman’s Art Club of New York. By 1912 she had joined the faculty of the Garden City Conservatory of Music and Arts, a music and art school organized by Countess Constance Boggs le Tourneux (a.k.a. Mrs. Lewis Dunham Boggs), located in Garden City, Long Island. The school never took off, and Upton returned to her work as a private artist in New York City.
Joining many other Brooklynites, in 1917 she vacationed at Lake Raquette, located in the Adirondacks of New York State. Beginning in the late 19 th century, “Raquette Lake developed into one of the most prestigious summer getaways for the elite…,” and came to serve as the “midpoint to other Gilded Age retreats such as the Great Camps Sagamore (1897), Camp Uncas (1890), and Kamp Kill Kare (1896) on nearby lakes Sagamore, Mohegan, and Kora, respectively.”
Ethelwyn B. Upton died in Manhattan after a bout with nephritis on Monday, the 22 nd of November 1920 (the year is often erroneously reported as 1921 or 1922) at the age of forty-nine years. Her funeral service was organized form the chapel of St. Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan on November 26 th with interment following in the family plot at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. At the time of her death, Upton was in a relationship with Bessie L. Gaylord, a college secretary, with whom she resided on West 119 th Street in Manhattan.
Upton was a Companion of the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross (SCHS), which according to Julia M. Allen’s book Passionate Commitments (2013) was “an Episcopal laywomen’s’ organization …devoted to intercessory prayer, thanksgiving and simplicity of life…the Companions were… a new form of social organization, devised by women, one that fostered the independence of members, independence especially from the traditional family structure in which women were wards of men, first of their fathers and then their husbands – and where a daughter’s lack of a husband by a certain age was sure to constitute a family crisis.” The SCHS became a place where like-minded single women of all backgrounds could meet, work and socialize and have the type of companionship beyond that normally found out in the world.
Some members of the SCHS would later organize the Church League for Industrial Democracy (CLID), which professed a new definition of love, “not meant to be simply a two-way street between God and individual humans but a multidirectional network, extending throughout humanity…” In theory, this new meaning of love could between man and woman, man and man or woman and woman, a change which was “profound and far-reaching.” Sometimes called “Homogenic Love,” it was about “same-sex devotion” not for necessarily for personal gratification, but for bettering society, which in turn led to close spiritual friendships and partnerships that were rarely “attempts at emulating heterosexual relationships.” At the turn of the twentieth century this led to a specific culture, “a culture that celebrated the social value of same-sex love and reversed the social condemnation traditionally accorded ‘spinsters.’” This type of relationship was made evident and confirmed when Ethelwyn Upton died in 1920 and the Companions not only “expressed ‘its sympathy with Miss Gaylord’” but also “with Upton’s relatives” as well.
The few works by Upton that have appeared on the market are often impressionist in nature, with some works done in a style popular with Victorian collectors and households. In addition to landscapes and townscapes, she painted floral still-lifes and Dutch interiors. She most often signed her name fully, “Ethelwyn B. Upton.” Upton was a member of the National Association of Women Painters & Sculptors.
Though there are undoubtedly other exhibitions in which Upton participated, those presently known include the following: O’Brien Gallery, New Orleans, LA, 1893; World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, IL, 1893; National Academy of Design, New York, NY, 1907; Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, Minneapolis, MN, 1908; Knoedler’s Galleries, New York, NY, 1908; Woman’s Art Club, New York, NY, 1909; National Association of Women Painters & Sculptors, New York, NY, 1914.
This following biography was researched, compiled, and written by Geoffrey K. Fleming, Executive Director, Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV.