Agnes Dean Abbatt (June 23, 1847 – January 1, 1917) of New York was a painter of floral still lifes, landscapes, and coastal scenes. She was the second woman elected to the

American Watercolor Society The American Watercolor Society, founded in 1866, is a nonprofit membership organization devoted to the advancement of watercolor painting in the United States. Qualifications AWS judges the work of a painter before granting admission to the soc ...

Early life

Agnes Dean Abbatt was born on June 23, 1847, in New York City to William D. and Agnes Alice (Dean) Abbatt. Her family left England during the late 18th century and settled in Pleasant Valley, New York where her father was born. Agnes' mother was a French Huguenot. Agnes's grandmother was an amateur artist and encouraged all of her grandchildren in the study of art, but Agnes was the only grandchild to pursue art as a career. Hillside Landscape by Agnes Dean Abbatt of New York

Hillside Landscape by Agnes Dean Abbatt of New York

Agnes Abbatt entered

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly known as Cooper Union, is a private college on Cooper Square in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-s ...

in 1873 and won a medal in her first year for her drawing of the head of Ajax. This led to her acceptance to the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Frederick Styles Agate, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, an ...

in New York. At the end of her first year, her first full-length drawing was selected for an exhibition.

Career

Abbatt decided that she didn't want to be a figure painter and left the academy after a year to study landscape painting. She studied under the landscape artists James David Smillie and

Robert Swain Gifford Robert Swain Gifford (December 23, 1840 – January 15, 1905) was an American landscape painter. He was influenced by the Barbizon school and became a member of the Society of American Artists. Early life and education Gifford was born on Non ...

.ABBATT, Agnes Dean
in ''

Marquis Who's Who Marquis Who's Who, also known as A.N. Marquis Company ( or ), is an American publisher of a number of directories containing short biographies. The books usually are entitled ''Who's Who in...'' followed by some subject, such as ''Who's Who in A ...

, published 1902 In 1875, two of her first paintings, watercolor panels of flowers, were exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Club where they were purchased. She continued painting flowers, and progressed to landscapes, and coastal views of New York, Maine, and Massachusetts. In 1880, she exhibited another work, ''When Autumn Turns the Leaves'', at the American Watercolor Society exhibition in New York. That same year, she was elected to join the Society; the second woman after Catherine Tharp Altvater. American Hillside Landscape

In addition to her career in art, Abbatt taught in Washington DC, Troy, NJ, and New Haven, CN. Amongst her private pupils was the

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ; colloquially nicknamed Cincy) is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking River (Kentucky), Licking and Ohio Ri ...

-born Claude Raguet Hirst who went on to be a

still life A still life (: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, human-m ...

painter and the only woman of her era to adopt the ''

trompe-l'œil ; ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional surface. , which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into perceiving p ...

'' ("fool the eye") technique. Abbatt continued to teach in New York and Maine, and continued to paint until her death on January 1, 1917.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Abbatt, Agnes Dean 1847 births 1917 deaths Painters from New York (state) American watercolorists 19th-century American painters 20th-century American painters Wikipedia articles incorporating text from A Woman of the Century American women watercolorists 19th-century American women painters 20th-century American women painters