Ellen S. H. Potter

Sources

found: Adams, M. The letters of Mrs. Henry Adams, 1936: inscription on front free endpaper (from Ellen S.H. Potter, December 1936)

found: Wikipedia entry for Edward W. Hooper, viewed April 20, 2015 (Ellen Sturgis Hooper was born in 1872, the daughter of Edward William Hooper and Fanny Hudson Chapin; married John Briggs Potter in 1908)

found: Adams, H. The letters of Henry Adams, [1930]: page xxxvii (Ellen Sturgis Hooper (1872-1974) m. John Briggs Potter (1864-1948))

found: Portrait of Ellen Sturgis Hooper on leicestergalleries.com, viewed April 20, 2015 (Edward W. Hooper of Boston commissioned a portrait of his daughter Ellen Sturgis Hooper from James Abbott McNeil Whistler around 1890; in later life she married John Briggs Potter of Michigan) {http://www.leicestergalleries.com/19th-20th-century-paintings/d/james-abbott-mcneill-whistler/12691}

found: OCLC, April 22, 2015 (access points: Potter, Ellen Hooper; Potter, Ellen Sturgis Hooper)

Ellen Sturgis Potter 1872-1974

Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life

By Natalie Dykstra 2012

https://books.google.com/books?id=OerJ8L1GsosC&lpg=PA228&ots=gAKJ81ane7&dq=Ellen%20Sturgis%20Potter&pg=PA228#v=onepage&q=Ellen%20Sturgis%20Potter&f=false I.S. 1/3/2018

Ellen Sturgis Hooper, ca 1873-??

Nationality: American

Date of Birth: 1873 ca

Place of Birth: Cambridge, MA

Date of Death:

Place of Death:

Identity:

Ellen Sturgis Hooper, later Mrs John Briggs Potter, was the daughter of Edward William Hooper, the Boston collector. She had a sister called Fanny, later Mrs G. S. Curtiss.

Life:

Ellen Hooper's father bought a couple of paintings from Whistler, Interior (YMSM 22) and A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend (YMSM 366). Interior (YMSM 22) was bequeathed to his daughter Fanny and A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend (YMSM 366) to Ellen. According to Ellen, A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend (YMSM 366) was bought when Whistler was painting her portrait, E. W. Hooper having commissioned Whistler to paint his eldest daughter in 1890, Six girls by the sea (M.391). The seventeen year old posed for Whistler in the south-facing studio at 21 Cheyne Walk, and her father attended all the sittings. She had twenty sittings, despite her father's stipulation that there should be no more than ten sittings of an hour each, due to his daughter's weak state (#09138). According to Armstrong who interviewed Ellen, Whistler 'was interested in Ellen's copper hair and high colouring. She wore a dress made of material sent her by a cousin in Japan, Dr W. S. Bigelow... Whistler talked very little during the sittings... gave the impression of intense concentration'.

Ellen's father wrote to Whistler in 1891 encouraging him to submit plans for the decoration of a panel for Bates Hall. He also suggested to Beatrix in that year that Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2: Portrait of Thomas Carlyle (YMSM 137) might be purchased for the Boston Public Library (#02169).

Bibliography:

US Census 1880 from http://www.familysearch.org (accessed 2004.03); Armstrong, J. B., 'Portrait of a Lady: A Recollection of Whistler, Art Journal, vol. 25, spring 1966, pp. 250-51; Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980; MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995.

http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/people/biog/?bid=Hoop_ES&initial= I.S. 1/3/2018