Edward Chalmers Leavitt, a native of Providence, Rhode Island, was an early New England painter said to be the most renowned still life painter of his day in Providence, although today he is largely forgotten.
Background
Leavitt was born March 9, 1842, the son of Providence pastor Review Jonathan Leavitt and his wife Charlotte Esther (Stearns) Leavitt. Leavitt"s father Review
Jonathan Leavitt, was born at Cornish, New Hampshire, and later settled in the ministry at Bedford, Massachusetts, where he married the daughter of the primary minister Review
Stearns, and subsequently was ordained minister of Richmond Street Congregational Church in Providence, where he remained for a quarter of a century.
Career
Review Leavitt"s son Edward Chalmers Leavitt, born in Providence, attended private schools in Providence, and Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, New Hampshire. During his Navy service, Leavitt frequently practiced his drawing technique. Little is known of Leavitt"s career.
Most of his paintings featured tabletop arrangements of flowers, fruit, antiques and vintage bric-a-brac, and were sought after by the Victorian middle class.
The oil on canvas paintings often were marked by their sense of texture. During the 1870s and 1880s Leavitt frequently exhibited at the National Academy of Design.
But as the new century approached, Leavitt"s output and quality declined, and his reputation faded. Leavitt"s work is in the collection of the Brandywine River Museum, which has called him "Providence, Rhode Island"s most successful still life painter of the nineteenth century." Leavitt"s work is also in the collection of the Cahoon Museum of American Art in Cotuit, Massachusetts, and in the collection of the Cummer Museum of Art In Jacksonville, Florida.
Leavitt died at his home in Providence in 1904.
