Ethel Blanchard Collver: life and works

Ethel Blanchard Collver (1875 – November 10, 1955) was an American Impressionist player and university who was best known for her portraits of children, scenes of daily life, and landscapes.

Born and raised in Boston, Ethel Blanchard Collver studied at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her early statute was influenced by teachers at the school; Frank W. Benson, Edmund C. Tarbel and Philip L. Hale. After graduation she studied briefly in the announce of Charles Hawthorne. Her subject event included children’s portraits, scenes of daily life, and landscapes. She used a variety of mediums which included oils upon canvas, miniatures upon shell, drawings in pencil and charcoal, water colors, and etchings.

By 1904 Collver began specializing in miniatures and portrait paintings, becoming a prolific and recognized portrait painter of children. Although continuing portrait accomplishment throughout her career, she broadened her artwork interests though spending a year (1919 – 1920) in Paris at the Académie Colarossi as a pupil of Charles Guerino, Bernard Naudin, and Henri Morrissey. While studying in Paris her specialties expanded to include daily enthusiasm scenes and landscapes. In 1932 she returned to Paris to study as soon as Audre L’Hote and Amédée Ozenfant.

She married the travel writer Leon L. Collver in 1906 and together they began traveling the world. In accessory to portrait painting, Collver’s operate reflects her experiences in Japan, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, England, the Dalmatian Coast, Jerusalem, Algiers, Cairo, Jamaica and the West Indies. When she was not traveling abroad, she lived in several U.S. cities in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Florida. As like her foreign paintings, her domestic daily computer graphics paintings reflect those East Coast locations. Whether foreign or domestic, the subject situation of her daily vibrancy scenes focused especially upon children and women at parks and gardens, at the seashore and at marketplaces.’

As a recognized minor artist Collver presented lectures and taught art workshops in Boston, New York, Greenwich and Ft. Lauderdale. Also, she organized and led a two-month traveling art workshop to Paris.

While studying in Paris in 1920, Collver’s oil painting titled “February in the Luxembourg” was prearranged for exhibition at the Spring Salon of the Societe Nationale des Beaux Artes. Her take effect has been exhibited in several museums and galleries upon the East Coast including the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the National Academy of Design in New York, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Copley Society of Boston, Doll and Richards in Boston, the Allbright Museum in Buffalo, and in Chicago at the American Art Today exhibition at the World’s Fair 1939.

In 1934 the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors awarded Collver the Olive Nobel Prize for Decorative Painting for her oil painting entitled “Manhattan Patterns”.