Ada Gilmore (married name Ada Gilmore Chaffee; 1883–1955) was an American

watercolor Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to ...

ist and

printmaker Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed techniqu ...

, one of the

Provincetown Printers Provincetown Printers was an art colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts during the early 20th-century of artists who created art using woodblock printing techniques. It was the first group of its kind in the United States, developed in an area when ...

Early life and education

Gilmore was born in

Kalamazoo, Michigan Kalamazoo ( ) is a city in the southwest region of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat of Kalamazoo County. At the 2010 census, Kalamazoo had a population of 74,262. Kalamazoo is the major city of the Kalamazoo-Portage Metropol ...

. As a pre-teen, she and her three siblings became orphaned, and she moved to

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingd ...

, Ireland, to live with an aunt. She was a student at the

Belfast School of Art The Belfast School of Art, is a School in thUlster University Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciencesand is physically located at the Belfast campus. Following the results of the Research Excellence Framework 2014 Ulster is ranked within ...

, and then at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum an ...

, from 1906 to 1912, under the tutelage of

Robert Henri Robert Henri (; June 24, 1865 – July 12, 1929) was an American painter and teacher. As a young man, he studied in Paris, where he identified strongly with the Impressionists, and determined to lead an even more dramatic revolt against A ...

. There, she and her long-time companion

Mildred McMillen Mildred McMillen (1884–1940) was an American printmaker. McMillen was a native of Chicago who studied at the School of the Art Institute in that city from 1906 until 1913. There, she and her long-time companion Ada Gilmore first met. She and G ...

first met. After completing their studies, Gilmore and McMillen moved to Long Island and from there to

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...

; In 1915,

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

forced them to return to the US and they settled in

Provincetown, Massachusetts Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States Census, Provin ...

. With McMillen, Ethel Mars, and Maud Hunt Squire they formed a group known as the

Career

In 1923, on another visit to Paris, Gilmore re-encountered Oliver Newberry Chaffee, Jr., who had studied with her under Robert Henri in New York City. They married in 1926, and under Chaffee's influence Gilmore began concentrating more on her painting and less on her prints. Gilmore exhibited her prints at the 1915

Panama–Pacific International Exposition The Panama–Pacific International Exposition was a world's fair held in San Francisco, California, United States, from February 20 to December 4, 1915. Its stated purpose was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, but it was widely se ...

(PPIE). With the other members of the Provincetown Printers, she developed a new style of printmaking using multiple colors on a single printing block, separated by white lines. Her prints have been described as "softer and more imaginative than the severely geometric" prints of the other members of the collective.

Death and legacy

Gilmore and Chaffee returned to Provincetown in 1928 from France, where she died in 1955. Chaffee had died in 1944 in Asheville, North Carolina. Gilmore's works are included in the collections of the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds ...

, the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the ...

, the

Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art ("The Johnson Museum") is an art museum located on the northwest corner of the Arts Quad on the main campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Its collection includes two windows from Frank Lloyd Wr ...

, the

Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egypt ...

, the

Indianapolis Museum of Art The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is an encyclopedic art museum located at Newfields, a campus that also houses Lilly House, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres, the Gardens at Newfields, the Beer Garden, and more. It i ...

, and the

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gilmore, Ada 1883 births 1955 deaths School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni 20th-century American printmakers American watercolorists American women printmakers 20th-century American women artists People from Kalamazoo, Michigan American expatriates in France Women watercolorists Painters from Michigan Students of Robert Henri