Adelaide Deming
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Adelaide Deming (December 12, 1864 – 1956) was an American painter, associated for much of her life with Litchfield, Connecticut. She was the 1908 winner of the Beal Prize for her watercolor Moon Shadows.
Born on December 12, 1864, in Litchfield, Connecticut,[1][2] Deming was descended from a family with deep roots in the community.[3] She received much of her training in New York City, studying at the Art Students League of New York; her teachers included William Merritt Chase, William Lathrop, Henry B. Snow, and Arthur Wesley Dow. She taught at the Pratt Institute for eight years. Deming resigned in 1910 along with other instructors when her department head, Edith Greer, was not reinstated.[4]
She was a member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors and the American Watercolor Society. She was president of the local suffrage group, the Litchfield Equal Franchise League.[5] She also served on the town board of education, in which role she helped to bring hot lunches to schools and to build a new school in the 1920s.[6] In 1918, she was one of 50 Connecticut women to meet with Senator George P. McLean about women's suffrage.[7][8]
Several of her paintings are owned by the Litchfield Historical Society, many of which were donated to the Society by the artist herself.[9] The society also possesses her papers, including brief correspondence with Booker T. Washington and a request to Victor Hugo's secretary requesting an autographed photo.[1] When the Archives of American Art was established in 1954, for the purpose of acquiring materials to promote scholarship on American artists, Deming's papers were selected as part of the collection. The Smithsonian photocopied the archival records and returned the originals to Litchfield.[1][10]
