Ellen Emmet Rand In UConn Exhibit

One day Ellen Emmet Rand’s paintings will be viewed on their merit and not because a woman did them. In spite of the show’s long-winded title, the work stands on its own. The eminent American portraitist was a gifted painter and an independent woman. Her work speaks for itself in a current exhibit of her portraits at University of Connecticut’s Benton Museum of Art.

Though she died prematurely at age 66 in 1941, Rand painted most everybody who was anybody — and then some — in her half of the century. She produced over 800 portraits in her lifetime.  Well connected, hard-working, supremely talented and prolific, Rand, born Ellen Emmet, was from a prominent American family — a cousin of William and Henry James.  After her father’s untimely death, the young artist began supporting the family at 16 by doing illustrations for Vogue and Harper’s Weekly.  Not content to be merely an illustrator, she aimed to be an artist.  As a young woman she headed for Paris with letters of introduction from the architect Charles McKim to the painter Frederick MacMonnies and from Stanford White to John Singer Sargent. In Paris, she studied painting with the famous MacMonnies (her masterful portrait of him is in the show.) 

The current exhibit in Storrs displays her considerable artistic achievements but also examines her life as a businesswoman who supported her family by painting portraits. The exhibition, titled “The Business of Bodies: Ellen Emmet Rand (1875-1941) and The Persuasion of Portraiture” at the William Benton Museum of Art at The University of Connecticut in Storrs, is  expertly curated by Alexis Boylan, an authority on Rand and an associate professor with a joint appointment in the Art and Art History Department and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Program. Boylan has written a book about Rand (to be published this year by Bloomsbury Press.)     

When she returned to the States after several years studying in Paris, Ellen Emmet married William Rand and moved to Salisbury, Conn., where his family had a farm and many of her descendants still live.  Though most portrait painters of the time were men, she was a popular exception. She continued painting and gave birth to three sons. In the 1920s and ‘30s a portrait by Ellen Emmet Rand was de rigueur for financial titans, government leaders, society figures, and those who could afford her fee.  At her busiest, she spent the week at her studio in NYC painting commissions, leaving husband and children in the country until she returned on weekends. 

The exhibit includes some magnificent portraits of the rich and powerful, some more intimate ones of neighbors and friends and there is also a section of paintings of her family. A portrait of Salisbury resident Lois Whitbeck with a glowing emerald background is as luminous and elegant as any of Sargent’s grande dames. The tender pictures of her half-brother as a baby and child are particularly moving because he died as a young man.

Rand’s business acumen is emphasized by including some letters and invoices.  Like all artists, she had to struggle to get paid. Artists all over the world will empathize with the note from a rich client who thanks her for a beautiful portrait and tries to weasel out of paying the full fee.  Rand painted several portraits of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the show includes her diary entries and sketches about the experience. Rand’s official FDR portrait was reported stolen from Hyde Park in 2004. 

There are 59 original works of art on display with 23 owned by The Benton; the rest are on loan from private and public institutions and family members. According to Boylan, Rand wasn’t a conscious feminist but an outlier. She worked as hard as the men to make ends meet for her family. She might have scoffed at the modern idea of feminism, but she showed a streak of practicality by using her advantages to her own advantage. Boylan says that she wasn’t above bartering — she had been known to trade a painting for a horse or a portrait or two for a tuition bill or two for her sons.  Rand’s portraits are in many major universities, institutions, and clubs and are also at The Scoville Library, The Hotchkiss School, and Salisbury Town Hall.   

“The Business of Bodies: Ellen Emmet Rand (1875-1941) and The Persuasion of Portraiture” at the William Benton Museum of Art at The University of Connecticut in Storrs is on view until March 10. For more information go to www.benton.uconn.edu.