Sophia Pitman
Sophia Lord Pitman 1855–1943
A Role Model for Female Artists
By Amanda Ward
Sophia Lord Pitman was a nineteenth century American painter
and teacher who was very active in professional art clubs. In order
to be successful during this period, women joined informal
arts organizations because these spaces offered a place for them to
congregate and flourish artistically. Pitman, for example, joined
the Providence Art Club, which was one of the few clubs to admit
women as members. She was also active in the Providence Water
Color Club, the Copley Society and several other professional
organizations. Such activity underscores the importance of the
artistic community in the creative process, as Michele Bogart
suggests.1
In effect, Sophia Pitman and other women who
founded supportive art communities helped to change the
American cultural landscape. Yet, despite their contributions,
these women artists’ stories are part of the “hidden” American
history—something this exhibition hopes to change.2
Sophia Pitman was born on March 2, 1855 and lived in
Providence, Rhode Island. She studied at the Rhode Island
School of Design and the Massachusetts Normal School
(now the Massachusetts College of Art and Design). Pitman
also attended the Art Students League in New York.3
While at the Art Students League, she worked with W. M. Chase,
F. DuMond, J. Twachtman, and J. A. Weir. Georgia O’Keefe
and Blanche Lazzell attended this school at the same time as
Pitman. Historians do not know if they knew each other.
Pitman’s and Lazzell’s early paintings suggest that they responded
to their teachers’ instruction with similar student works, and
thus were at least acquaintances. Both created pastel landscapes
that recall Chase’s and Twachtman’s impressionistic colors and
scumbled landscapes. One of Pitman’s pieces, Untitled (ca 1890),
depicts a watercolor landscape. Possibly influenced by Blanche
Lazzell, she used rich colors and soft strokes to show the opulent
beauty of nature.
As these artists matured, each found their own artistic voice.
Nonetheless, it was significant that Pitman and Lazzell studied
in New York because art academia was still seen as a “gentleman’s
club”—one in which women were denied the same education as
their male counterparts. To become professional artists, Pitman,
Lazzell, and O’Keefe had to challenge conventions that pushed
them to the margins of the art world.4
They did so by founding
clubs and teaching at schools that supported women artists.
Pitman, for example, was an instructor at the Friends School
in Providence and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
As an instructor, she served as a role model for her young
female students.5
She not only taught them in the classroom,
but instructed them about how to become professional artists.
Because she exhibited her work at the Pettaquamscutt Historical
Society in Kingston, Rhode Island, local students could learn
about the connection between the gallery and professional art world.
Pitman also contributed to the transformation of American
culture in other ways. She was a good friend of Eleanor Norcross,
an American painter from Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Norcross’
paintings were exhibited at the Louvre in Paris and at the Museum
of Fine Arts in Boston. When she wished to build a cultural
center in Fitchburg, Norcross asked Pitman to be one of its trustees.
Although Norcross died before she could commence with
construction, Pitman and another friend built the museum. In her
will, Norcross had provided a $100,000 trust fund to be used for
its construction. The trustees employed female architects to finish
the project and did so again when they remodeled an old stable
that would eventually become the Fitchburg Art Museum.
Women artists and their patrons are not commonly referenced in
art history. Sophia Lord Pitman is an example of a talented, largely
forgotten artist and educator who certainly deserves more study.
1 :: See Michele Bogart, Artists, Advertising and the Borders of Art (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995).
2 :: Kirsten Swinth, Painting Professionals: Women Artists and the Development of
Modern American Art (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North
Carolina Press), p.2.
3 :: John I. H. Baur, Unknown American Painters of the 19th Century (New York:
College Art Association, 1947), p. 28.
4 :: “The History of the Art Students League of New York– The Art Students
League.” The Art Students League, https://www.theartstudentsleague.org/
history-art-students-league-new-york/. Accessed March 09, 2017.
5 :: Swinth, Painting Professionals, p. 3.
https://www.umassd.edu/media/umassdartmouth/college-of-visual-and-performing-arts/undergraduate-programs/art-history/Making-Her-Mark.pdf EM 5/10/2019
