Background
Impressed with the drawings her father, Doctor Thomas Hanover Fenton, an art patron and head of the Philadelphia Art Club, showed them to a family friend, Thomas Eakins.
Impressed with the drawings her father, Doctor Thomas Hanover Fenton, an art patron and head of the Philadelphia Art Club, showed them to a family friend, Thomas Eakins.
Student, School Industrial Art, Philadelphia, 1903-1904; student, Pennsylvania Academy Fine Arts, 1904-1911; AFD, Moore Institute Art, 1954.
Inspired by Rosa Bonheur she decided to become an animalier, so began drawing animals at the Philadelphia Zoo. Eakins found the drawings “too flat” and suggested that Fenton “get some clay and mold lieutenant” Fenton enrolled in a sculpture class taught by A. Stirling Calder on 1903 and her future direction was set. From 1904 to 1912 she studied with Charles Grafly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
There she met Marjorie Martinet and Emily Clayton Bishop.
Her relationship with Martinet lasted more than fifty years, and included the exchange of passionate letters. Fenton taught sculpture at what is now the Moore College of Art and Design from 1942-1953. and her Nereid Fountain is featured in the National Service Scheme exhibition of 1929.
Her Seaweed Fountain is included in the Brookgreen Gardens collection. She died in Philadelphia in 1983.
Fellow National Sculpture Society, Pennsylvania Academy Fine Arts (McCellan anatomy prize 1907, Edmund Stewardson prize 1908, gold medal 1922, Fellowship prize 1922). Member Art Alliance.