The Wonders of Winter
Ellen Emmet Rand
Salisbury, CT
Ellen Emmet Rand (1875 – 1941) was an extraordinary painter and illustrator. ”[She] was arguably one of the most important and prolific American portrait painters of her time” (https://benton.uconn.edu/2017/02/23/work-it-women-artists-ellen-emmet-rand-and-the-business-of-seeing/#), painting over 500 works during her career including portraits of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and her cousins Henry James and William James. She studied at the Cowles Art School in Boston and the Art Students League in New York City and produced illustrations for Vogue Magazine and Harper's Weekly before traveling to England and then France to study. The William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut owns the largest collection of her painted works. Rand's primary studio was in New York City but she would also work in Salisbury where her family lived. The painting in this exhibition, The Skier, portrays Peter DeVito, a young man who worked on the family farm.
