Lilla Cabot Perry was an American artist, who created her landscapes and portraits in a free-form manner. She was a pivotal promoter of Impressionism in the United States. She was also a published author, writing four volumes of original poetry and a translation of classical Greek verse.
Background
Perry was born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, on January 13, 1848. She was a daughter of Hannah Lowell Jackson Cabot and Dr. Samuel Cabot III, a distinguished surgeon. She was the eldest of eight children, among whom were Samuel Cabot IV (born in 1850), chemist and founder of Valspar's Cabot Stains, Dr. Arthur Tracy Cabot (born in 1852), a progressive surgeon, Godfrey Lowell Cabot (born in 1861), founder of Cabot Corporation, James Jackson Cabot, Helen Jackson Cabot and Guy Chilton Cabot.
The Cabots were prominent in Boston society, and the circle of her family included Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell (her mother's cousin), and Louisa May Alcott. Perry recalled having the possibility to play the game called "fox and geese" with both Alcott and Emerson.
Education
Since an early childhood, Lilla Cabot Perry studied poetry, music, literature, language, and also had informal sketching sessions with her friends. In addition, as a child, she enjoyed reading books and playing sports outdoors.
Perry was 13 when the Civil War broke out. Her parents were fervent abolitionists and took an active role in caring for sick and injured soldiers and protecting runaway slaves. At seventeen, when the war was over, Perry moved with her family to a farm in Canton, Massachusetts, where she first became interested in landscapes and nature. In 1887 she studied painting while travelling through Europe with her parents.
Being mainly a self-taught painter, she had her first formal art lessons at the age of thirty-six. Perry's father died in 1885, leaving her an inheritance that allowed her to study art in earnest. Starting with private lessons in 1886, she was a student of the Cowles School of Art in Boston. In June 1867 she travelled with her family to Paris. There Perry studied at the Académie Julian (now part of ESAG Penninghen) and at the Académie Colarossi with the English painter Alfred Stevens.
Career
Perry finished the work on her earliest known painting, Portrait of an Infant (Margaret Perry), in 1878. This work drew on the inspiration that would occupy much of her artworks throughout her career - her children. At her home on Marlborough Street in Boston, Perry was frequently visited by various prominent artists and writers, including Henry James.
The owner of the Waltham Watch Company commissioned Lilla Cabot Perry to paint his three daughters, which allowed her to travel to Europe, moving to Paris in 1887. Around this period of time, she also travelled to Spain to copy works at the Museo del Prado. Her work titled The Red Hat (1888) strongly reflected the influence of both formal training and her exposure to the old masters, especially the work of Sandro Botticelli, an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance.
With the encouragement of artist Walter Gay, she submitted two of her recent paintings to the Societe des Artistes Independants. The portraits of her husband Thomas Sergeant Perry (1889) and her daughter Edith Perry (1889) were accepted by the Paris Salon. This accomplishment launched Lilla Perry's career in France. While in Paris, Perry befriended Camille Pissarro, a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter, as well as Mary Cassatt, an American painter and printmaker.
When she was 41, Lilla Cabot Perry saw her first Impressionist painting in a Paris gallery, and this became a turning point in her life. Inspired by Claude Monet's works, the Perrys spent the next summer in Giverny, where Monet lived. As a result, she spent nine of the summers between 1889 and 1909 at a rented house at Giverny in northern France, close to the artist's home. Perry formed a close friendship with Claude Monet whose impressionistic handling of colour and light greatly influenced her works. Claude Monet did not teach his techniques, but he often gave Perry advice about her work.
Her La Petite Angèle, II (1888) proved the impressive evolution of her style during this period. Unlike her earlier portraits, where she used more traditional techniques, the portraits of this period were obviously impressionistic in style with its free form brushstrokes that capture the impression of light and colour.
By the fall of 1889, Perry had left Giverny for Belgium and the Netherlands. She returned to Boston with her family in 1891, and her artistic career took on new meaning. She was greatly inspired by the new style of painting she had acquired while overseas. However, she was not content to simply paint in the new style, she preferred to develop her own one. Besides, she was eager to "foster a new truth in painting" in the Boston art community that was not aware of the new Impressionist modes. In 1890 the artist organized the first public exhibition at St. Botolph of Breck landscapes.
Working in Boston and on a New Hampshire farm during the summers, Perry created numerous portraits and landscapes in the Impressionist style in order to support the family. She exhibited her works in Paris and the United States. In 1893 she was chosen to represent her state at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. She displayed seven of her works there: four of the compositions were worked in the en plein air style (Petite Angèle, I, An Open Air Concert, Reflections, Child in a Window) and three were more formal studio portraits (Portrait of a Child, Child with a Violoncello, Portrait Study of a Child).
In the year 1894, Lilla Cabot Perry's Impressionist paintings were presented in Boston at the prestigious gentlemen's venue, St. Botolph Club. There she found out that her works and the style of Impressionism were finally accepted in the United States. She also organized an exhibit of Monet's paintings at the Boston Art Students Association that same year.
Her oeuvre achieved international acclaim during the years 1894 through 1897. She displayed her works in Boston, as well as the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1897 St. Botolph Club held her personal exhibition, which featured a full range of Perry's artworks, including both Impressionist portraits and landscapes.
In 1897 a new inspiration entered Lilla Cabot Perry's life when her husband was offered a teaching position in Japan as an English professor at Keiogijku University. So, the family moved to Japan and resided there for three years, from 1898 to 1901. Lilla produced a great number of paintings while living there, and took full advantage of Tokyo's artistic community. Her experience with an Asian art world made it possible for her to develop a unique style. It brought together western and eastern influences. The result of this combination was striking.
In October 1898 Perry presented her paintings in Tokyo, with the assistance of Okakura Kakuzō, one of the Imperial Art School co-founders. Mount Fuji became the main subject of more than 35 of her paintings and she made a total of circa 80 paintings while in Japan, including such works as Meditation, Child in a Kimono and Young Girl.
By 1901 the Perrys had returned to Boston. Two years later they bought a farmhouse in Hancock, New Hampshire as a summer home. In 1904 she painted Portrait of Mrs. Joseph Clark Grew (her daughter Alice), which made a great debut at the prestigious International Louisiana Purchase Exhibition in St. Louis.
Perry's life for the next few years was extremely difficult. She returned to France in 1905, but the following winter she had serious problems with her health. Frequent trips and unprofitable investments had used up most of the inheritance Perry had received from her father. Thus, she permanently needed commissions to paint portraits to support the family, which also disadvantageously affected the state of her health.
Since 1908 Perry permanently resided in Boston. She decided to focus on portraits because they brought more money than her landscapes. Her health subsequently improved, and the Salon des Independants in Paris displayed six of her paintings that year. With a newfound inspiration for her art, she created an urban view - the State House in Boston (1910).
Throughout her career as an artist, Lilla Cabot Perry was active in the local artistic communities and promoted the Impressionist style wherever she lived. She was a co-founder of the Guild of Boston Artists. In 1914 it opened its galleries to promote accomplished painters and sculptors. Perry was a board member and first Secretary of the Guild, where she worked hard to attract sponsors. In 1920 the Guild paid tribute to Perry for her six-year service.
In 1922, Lilla Cabot Perry had her first personal show in New York, which featured her landscapes from Japan and Giverny. A New York Morning Telegrapher review called it "one of the most exciting exhibitions given by a woman in this city in years."
Perry published a book of poetry, The Jar of Dreams, in 1923. The same year Lilla fell ill with diphtheria. The next two years she was trying to recover from her illness in Charleston, South Carolina, concurrently creating such paintings as Road from Charleston to Savannah and A Field, Late Afternoon, Charleston, South Carolina. It was during that time that Perry found a new theme for her landscapes, what she referred to as "snowscapes." The examples of her snowscapes include A Snowy Monday (1926) and After First Snow (1926).
In 1927 Lilla Cabot Perry held another exhibition at the Gordon Dunthorne Gallery. The same year she published "Reminiscences of Claude Monet from 1889 to 1909" in the Magazine of Art. Perry spent a considerable amount of time mourning her husband's death in 1928, but she eventually allowed her work to be exhibited at the Guild of Boston Artists in 1929 and then again in 1931. Many of her landscapes were displayed at that show, including Autumn Leaves (1926), Snow, Ice, Mist (1929), and Lakeside Reflections (1929-1931). Mist on the Mountain (1931) was her last exhibited landscape.
(also known as Railway Embankment - Giverny, Normandy Land...)
At the Window
(also known as Portrait of Julia Sullivan Lynch)
Roses
(also known as The Scent of Roses)
The Poacher
(also known as The Hunter)
Young Caretaker
(also known as Motherhood)
Child in Kimono
The Yellow Screen
Angela
Augustus Lowell Putnam
A Young Violoncellist
The Black Hat
Autumn Afternoon, Giverny
The Yellow Screen
The Story Hour
La Petite Angèle, II
Edith with Lierre
Giverny Landscae, in Monet's Garden
Edwin Arlington Robinson
By the Brook
Child in Window
Portrait of the Baroness von R.
Autumn Afternoon, Giverny
Thomas Sergeant Perry Reading a Newspaper
The Letter
Lady in an Evening Dress
Haystacks, Giverny
Open Air Concert
Portrait of a Young Girl with an Orange
The Pink Rose
A Snowy Monday
Girl with a Pink Bow
A Fairy Tale
Little Girl in a Lane, Giverny
Study of LIght and Reflection
The Purple Shawl
Cliffs at Etretat
Fuji from Lava Beach
Self Portrait
Mountain Village, Japan
The Cellist
The Trio, Tokyo, Japan
William Dean Howells
Child in a Walled Garden, Giverny
Mrs. Joseph Clark Grew Alice Perry Grew
Alice in a White Hat
Brook and Wash-House, Giverny
The Chrystal Gazer
Girl Playing a Cello
Young Bicyclist
Thomas Sergeant Perry
Suruga Bay, Azaleas
The Silver Vase
Margaret with a Bonnet
At the River's Head
The Green Hat
The Violoncellist
Fuji from the Canal, Iwabuchi
The Poppy Screen
Boy Fishing
Japanese Girl
A Peach Tree
Meditation
The State House
Japan
Portrait of a Lady
The Sculptor
Reading
Lotus Flowers Oya, Japan
In a Japanese Garden
Lady with a Bowl of Violets
Dans un Bateau (In a Boat)
Woman with a Cat
The Black Hat
Alice in the Lane
Playing by Heart
Mother and Baby (Alice Grew and Anita)
Lady at the Tea Table
Child with Red Hair Reading
Giverny Hillside
Children Dancing, II
The Pearl
Mrs. Henry Lyman Elizabeth Cabot Lyman
Child in a Gerden, Giverny
The Beginner Margaret Perry
Portrait of Kahlil Gibran
Self-portrait
Cherry Blossoms
In the Studio
Membership
In October 1898 Perry became an honorary member of the Nippon Bijutsu-In Art Association. She was a founding member of The Guild of Boston Artists, which was established in 1914.
Nippon Bijutsu-In Art Association
,
Japan
October, 1898
The Guild of Boston Artists
,
United States
1914
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
A Boston Evening Transcript critic: "Mrs. Perry is one of the most genuine, no-nonsense, natural painters that we know of... Such paintings must be taken seriously."
William Gerdts: "Lilla Cabot Perry was one of the most significant of the American painters who went to Japan in the late 19th century; ... of all the Americans to work there, ... Perry's work is the least traditional and is the most indebted to the Impressionist aesthetic, and some of her Japanese scenes are, in colour and brushwork, extremely close to Monet."
Interests
Philosophers & Thinkers
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Connections
In 1874 Lilla Cabot married Thomas Sargeant Perry, a professor of 18th-century English literature and linguist. His granduncle was Matthew C. Perry, Commodore of the United States Navy. The marriage produced three daughters: Margaret (born in 1876), Edith (born in 1880), and Alice (born in 1884).