Elsie Lower Pomeroy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
September 30, 1882
Elsie Lower Pomeroy | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Elsie E. Lower September 30, 1882 |
| Died | 1971 (aged 88–89) |
| Education | Corcoran School of Art |
| Known for | Oil painting, watercolor, botanical illustrations |
| Movement | American Scene Painting |
Elsie Lower Pomeroy (1882–1971) was an artist most closely associated with the American Scene Painting movement and specifically California Regionalism or California Scene Painting. She was also one of a small group of botanical illustrators who worked for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in the early 20th century.
Elsie E. Lower was born September 30, 1882, in New Castle, Pennsylvania.[1] She was the daughter of Cyrus B. Lower, a decorated Union Army American Civil War veteran and Medal of Honor recipient.[2] She grew up in Washington, D.C., and graduated from the Corcoran School of Art in the early 1900s.[1]
USDA illustrator
By 1908, she was working as an artist for the USDA, drawing botanical illustrations for the USDA yearbooks.[1] She was one of a select cohort of botanical illustrators working for the USDA at this time, among whom were also Deborah Griscom Passmore, Ellen Isham Schutt, Royal Charles Steadman, and Amanda Newton. She painted over 280 watercolors for the USDA, including both common fruits such as citrus, apples, and strawberries, and less common fruits such as cherimoyas. The 1908 USDA yearbook contained two of her images, including the Augbert peach (pg. 479) and Kawakami and Lonestar persimmons (pg. 484).[3] The 1909 USDA yearbook contained two of her images, including an ear of corn (pg. 335) and the Diploma currant (pg. 414).[4] Unlike most of her USDA colleagues, she would go on to have a career as an exhibiting artist after she left the service.
In 1911, she married Carl Stone Pomeroy, a young pomologist at the USDA. By 1913, the couple had moved to Riverside, California, where Carl joined the Citrus Experiment Station and helped to develop the navel orange/citrus industry in Southern California.
