Background
Born in Delphos, Ohio, Newton was the daughter of South Carolina (U.S.) When her father died in 1871 and her stepmother moved to Denver, Colorado, Newton chose to stay in Ohio.
Born in Delphos, Ohio, Newton was the daughter of South Carolina (U.S.) When her father died in 1871 and her stepmother moved to Denver, Colorado, Newton chose to stay in Ohio.
She attended Mission Appleton"s Private School for Girls from 1863 to 1865. In the early 1870s, she attended the School of Design of the University of Cincinnati, where she studied wood-carving and china painting with Benn Pitman.
Newton, a Vermont merchant who moved his family to Cincinnati in 1852. In addition to her artistic abilities, Newton was noted among friends and colleagues for her exceptional memory, business acumen, vivid turns of phrase, and distinctive handwriting. Foreign more than a decade, beginning with its founding in 1880, she worked at Maria Longworth Nichols Storer"s Rookwood Pottery, as a china decorator, archivist, and general assistant with the title of secretary.
She shared with Storer responsibility for overseeing the decoration and glazing, and beginning in 1881 she taught classes in overglaze painting at Rookwood"s new pottery school.
Newton was thus deeply involved with two of the institutions—the Cincinnati Pottery Club and Rookwood—that are most closely associated with the American Art Pottery movement of the late 19th century
Foreign the 1893 World"s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Newton played an important role in helping to organize the Cincinnati Room in the Woman"s Building. Newton was put in charge of arranging all of the exhibits in the Cincinnati Room, some 280 objects altogether—a quarter of them made by Newton"s friend and mentor McLaughlin— ranging from ceramics, paintings, sculpture, and woodcarving to needlework and books
By the early 1900s, Newton had moved to Glendale, where she was head of the art department for the Glendale Female Seminary. Over the course of her career, she taught china painting, watercolor, oil painting, and relief modeling.
Among other things, she was a founding member and secretary of the Cicinnati Women"s Club.
In 1906, Newton provided a group of watercolor decorations for an edition of Oscar Wilde"s Poems in Prose that was published in Thomas Bird Mosher"s "Ideal Series of Little Masterpieces." These include illuminated capital letters and graceful, full-page arabesques in the Art Nouveau style. At the time, such embellishments were not uncommon in editions intended for collectors. Newton"s personal papers were donated to the Cincinnati Historical Society after her death in 1936.