Willie Betty Newman
Born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1863, and died in 1935, Nashville, Tennessee.
Willie Betty Newman was one of the most important figures in the visual arts in Tennessee at the turn of the 20th century. Newman was born on the Maple Grove Plantation in 1863 near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. At the age of 26 in 1889, Newman left Rutherford County to study at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, under the tutelage of Thomas Satterwhite Noble. Under Noble’s advisement, Newman left for Paris in 1891 under a three year scholarship and studied at the Académie Julian, where she learned under Jean Joseph Benjamin-Constant and trained with William Bouguereau, Jean Paul Laurens, Robert Fleury and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, in the academic style of painting.
Newman maintained a studio in Paris and achieved acclaim for her artistic accomplishments. She was well known for her sympathetic genre scenes depicting Breton peasants and peasant life. She exhibited in the Paris Salon annually from 1891 until 1900. This was a feat for not only Americans, but, in particular for women. In this year, Newman was awarded an honorable mention for her portrait of the daughter of American consul John K. Gowdy. Newman was able to sustain herself in Paris by selling her paintings.
Newman’s most revered work is of her treatment of peasant life in France. There is a mystical quality that was influenced by the Barbizon artists such as Jean-Francois Millet. In the summer of 1902, Newman returned to Nashville and worked to establish the kind of reputation she had enjoyed in Paris. Her work was shown in the art pavilion of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.
Newman found success in being Nashville’s resident portrait painter for the rest of her career in She was commissioned to paint prominent Tennesseans such as John Trotwood Moore, Governor James Frazier and Joel Cheek. The U.S. Congress commissioned her to produce posthumous portraits of James K. Polk and John C. Bell.
Willie Betty Newman was one of the most important figures in the visual arts in Tennessee at the turn of the 20th century. Newman was born on the Maple Grove Plantation in 1863 near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. At the age of 26 in 1889, Newman left Rutherford County to study at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, under the tutelage of Thomas Satterwhite Noble. Under Noble’s advisement, Newman left for Paris in 1891 under a three year scholarship and studied at the Académie Julian, where she learned under Jean Joseph Benjamin-Constant and trained with William Bouguereau, Jean Paul Laurens, Robert Fleury and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, in the academic style of painting.
Newman maintained a studio in Paris and achieved acclaim for her artistic accomplishments. She was well known for her sympathetic genre scenes depicting Breton peasants and peasant life. She exhibited in the Paris Salon annually from 1891 until 1900. This was a feat for not only Americans, but, in particular for women. In this year, Newman was awarded an honorable mention for her portrait of the daughter of American consul John K. Gowdy. Newman was able to sustain herself in Paris by selling her paintings.
Newman’s most revered work is of her treatment of peasant life in France. There is a mystical quality that was influenced by the Barbizon artists such as Jean-Francois Millet. In the summer of 1902, Newman returned to Nashville and worked to establish the kind of reputation she had enjoyed in Paris. Her work was shown in the art pavilion of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.
Newman found success in being Nashville’s resident portrait painter for the rest of her career in She was commissioned to paint prominent Tennesseans such as John Trotwood Moore, Governor James Frazier and Joel Cheek. The U.S. Congress commissioned her to produce posthumous portraits of James K. Polk and John C. Bell.
(American, 1863 – 1935)
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