Mary Theresa Hart
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mary Theresa Hart | |
|---|---|
 Mary Theresa Hart, standing at right, with her sister Letitia B. Hart in their studio at 11 East 14th Street in Manhattan, published in February 1899 issue of Metropolitan Magazine | |
| Born | January 7, 1872 Brooklyn, New York |
| Died | February 25, 1942 (aged 70) Brooklyn, New York |
| Known for | Painting |
Mary Theresa Hart (January 7, 1872 – February 25, 1942) was an American artist and illustrator. She was known for portraits of sitters as prominent as her father, the Hudson River School painter James McDougal Hart[1] and the writers William Austin Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's brother) and Zoe Anderson Norris;[2] and for children's book and magazine illustrations. In the early 1900s she was considered "one of the best women artists" in New York.[3]
Hart was born in 1872 in New York, the third child and second daughter of James McDougal Hart and the artist Mary Theresa Gorsuch Hart (d. 1921), who was best known for Easter Morning, a widely reproduced image of a white marble cross draped in flowers.[4] James M. Hart's siblings included the artists William Hart and Julie Hart Beers. Mary Theresa Hart's sister, Letitia Bonnet Hart (1867-1953), was also a painter. (Their brother Robert Gorsuch Hart, a water-plant engineer, died while working in Mexico in 1906, at age 37.)[5] The family lived at 94 First Place in Brooklyn and had a country home in Lakeville, Connecticut.
Mary Theresa Hart studied at the National Academy of Design in New York and with Will Hicok Low[6] and Edgar Melville Ward.
The two sisters and their father commuted daily from Brooklyn to adjoining top-floor studios at 11 East 14th Street in Manhattan.[7] Mary Theresa Hart often sat for portraits by her sister, offering an "intelligent grasp of the poses," and the two women occasionally collaborated on canvases.[8] A poem about the artist trio ended in the refrain, "don’t you wish that you were smart, Like James, Letitia and Mary Hart?"[9]
Mary Theresa Hart died in 1942 at the family's Brooklyn row house. She is buried with her family in Green-Wood Cemetery.
