Irene E. Parmelee

Irene E. Parmalee
Born 1847
Guilford, Connecticut
Died August 29, 1934
Los Angeles, California
Nationality American
Education Nathaniel Jocelyn, Yale Art School, Académie Julian
Known for Portraits
Henry Bronson (1804-1893), oil on canvas, 1881, Yale University Art Gallery
Young Girl with Kittens, 1895
Portrait of Mrs. John R. Hixon, Springfield, Massachusetts

Irene E. Parmelee, her surname also spelled Parmely (1847 1934),[1] was an American painter and portrait artist.

Early life

Irene E. Parmelee born in Guilford, Connecticut.[2] She was the daughter of Mary and Horton L. Parmelee, a farmer. Her older siblings were Emily, Charles, Mary, and Jane.[3]

Education

Parmelee studied under Henry Bryant of Hartford beginning in 1872 and the following year with Nathaniel Jocelyn in New Haven. She studied for a year at the Yale Art School, which had just begun admitting women,[2][4] under Robert Walter Weir.[5] Still stating to others that she was still a student, she opened a studio in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1875.[4]

Parmelee later traveled to Paris and attended the Académie Julian from 1881 to 1884 where she studied with Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, Pierre Auguste Cot, and Jules Joseph Lefebvre.[2]

Career

She was a career portrait artist and operated a studio in Springfield, Massachusetts from 1875 to 1929.[2] Parlee painted the portrait of Marcus Perrin Knowlton, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, made after a photogravure, in 1912. It hung in the court house in Springfield following a formal presentation ceremony at the fourth annual Massachusetts Bar Association meeting in December of that year.[6][7] She was paid $1,125 (equivalent to $26,488 in 2015) for the framed painting.[8]

Parmelee made a portrait of Samuel Bowles, III, who was an editor of the Republican and a City Library Association member for 37 years and was on the board of directors for 24 years. His wife donated the portrait to the Springfield Library, which was hung next to a portrait of his father, Samuel Bowles, II.[9]

Death

She died on August 29, 1934 in Los Angeles, California.[10][11][12]

Works

A partial list of her paintings are:

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 "Search: Parmalee painter". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 B. Fahlman (1991). "Women Art Students at Yale, 1869-1913: Never True Sons of the University". Woman's Art Journal 12 (1): 15–23.
  3. "Irene E. Parmele, Guilford, Connecticut", Seventh Census of the United States, 1850; Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29; National Archives, Washington, D.C., September 20, 1850: 30
  4. 4.0 4.1 Harry Willard French (1878). Art and Artists in Connecticut. Lee and Shepard. p. 171.
  5. William Clogston (1884). King's Handbook of Springfield, Massachusetts: A Series of Monographs, Historical and Descriptive. J.D. Gill, Publisher. p. 165.
  6. Sydney Russell Wrightington; Horace Williams Fuller; Arthur Weightman Spencer, Thomas Tileston Baldwin (1913). The Green Bag. Boston Book Company. p. 78.
  7. Massachusetts Historical Society (1914). Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The Society. p. 127.
  8. Massachusetts Bar Association (1914). Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bar Association. Rockwell & Churchill Press. p. 64.
  9. Springfield City Library Association (Springfield, Mass.) (1916). Springfield City Library Bulletin. p. 186.
  10. Irene E. Parmelee, died August 29, 1934, Los Angeles, Pleasanton, California: California Department of Health and Welfare. California Vital Records. The Vitalsearch Company Worldwide, Inc.
  11. "Irene E. Parmelee (Deaths)". Los Angeles Times. August 30, 1934. Irene E. Parmelee of 324 Union Place. Services today at 10:30 a.m. at the chapel of Francis V. Hall & Son.
  12. "Official Death List". Los Angeles Times. September 2, 1934. Irene E. Parmelee - August 29 - 87 years old
  13. Federal Writers' Project of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Maine (1939). Maine's Capitol. Kennebec Journal Print Shop. p. 31.
  14. Cuthbert Lee (1968). Portrait register. Biltmore Press. pp. 237, 595.

Further reading

External links