Lilla Cabot Perry
Boston, 1848 - 1933, Hancock, New Hampshire
Lilla Cabot was a descendant not only of the Boston Brahmin Cabot family but also of the equally distinguished Lowells. In 1874 she married Thomas Sergeant Perry, a professor of 18th-century literature at Harvard University. The couple had three daughters, who would become frequent models for their mother’s paintings. The Perry home became an intellectual salon for such writers as Henry James and William Dean Howells and for Lilla Perry’s brother-in-law, artist John La Farge. It may have been the latter who urged her to study painting. Starting with private lessons in 1886, she attended the Cowles School of Art in Boston. She and her family traveled to Paris in June 1867. On this trip abroad Perry studied at the Académie Julian and at the Académie Colarossi with the English painter Alfred Stevens.
The most important influence on her artistic development, however, came from her relationship with the Impressionist painter Claude Monet. For many years the Perry family summered in Giverny, France, near Monet’s home, and he became a friend and mentor to Perry. Monet suggested that Perry commit her first impression of a scene to canvas rather than to sketchbook. Through such lessons Perry mastered Impressionist techniques. After returning to Boston with one of Monet’s images of Etretat, France, Perry encouraged American interest in him and the other Impressionists by lecturing and publishing essays on the movement and by urging her friends to purchase Monet’s paintings.
From 1893 to 1901, Perry lived in Tokyo where her husband taught English literature. During this period she painted more than 80 pictures of Japanese scenes, incorporating Japanese and Chinese painting techniques into her work. Like other Impressionists, she found subjects for her painting both in landscapes and in ordinary daily activities. The paintings of her later period feature landscapes near Hancock, New Hampshire.
CITE
Contributor:
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
Article Title:
Lilla Cabot Perry
Website Name:
Encyclopædia Britannica
Publisher:
Encyclopædia Britannica, inc.
Date Published:
July 30, 2014
URL:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lilla-Cabot-Perry
Access Date:
January 03, 2018
I.S.
Person TypeIndividual
Last Updated8/7/24
Florence, 1856 - 1925, London
Boston, 1880 - 1965, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts
Fockbury, England, 1859 - 1936, Cambridge, England
South Kingstown, Rhode Island, 1794 - 1858, New York
Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1860 - 1954, Exeter, New Hampshire
