Background
Hildebrandt was born Cornelia Trumbull Ellis in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the daughter of Arthur Cadwalader and Eliza (Potter) Ellis.
Hildebrandt was born Cornelia Trumbull Ellis in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the daughter of Arthur Cadwalader and Eliza (Potter) Ellis.
She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and then spent two years in Paris (1897 – 1898) where she studied at the Académie Colarossi and with Augustus Koopman and Virginia Richmond Reynolds.
One of the last surviving figures from the revival of miniature painting in America at the turn of the 20th century, she lectured extensively on the genre in her later years. His painting Mission C is thought to be portrait of her. By 1912 she had established her career as a miniaturist with a solo exhibition of 15 of her paintings at the Worcester Art Museum.
Cornelia and Howard Hildebrandt spent much of their later years at their summer home in New Canaan, Connecticut.
Howard Hildebrandt died in 1958. Cornelia died in New Canaan four years later at the age of 85.
During the 1930s she was also a member of the Works Progress Administration.