Elenore plaisted abbott biography
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She studied at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. My later work has been illustrating Keat’s poems, which have found no publisher as yet, though they are my best work, and doing color illustrations for Scribner’s Magazine. She also helped to establish the Rose Valley swimming pool by donating land, and in 1928 she sold several of her paintings to finance the construction of the pool.
She was a member of the Philadelphia Water Color Club and the Plastic Club of Philadelphia.
Elenore Plaisted Abbott was a nationally known illustrator, scenic designer, and artist (both landscape and portrait). She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, and in Paris before entering the Drexel Institute, where she studied with Howard Pyle in 1899.
Abbott exhibited her work at the Académie des Beaux Arts in Paris and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
She was born in Lincoln, Maine.
Sometime later (between 1916 and 1919), Elenore wrote to Pyle’s secretary that the only work she was glad to have done was under Mr. Pyle.
She gained a strong reputation as an illustrator. She created the skrims for The Emperor Jones, which were used by Hedgerow for many years. Upon her return in 1899 she enrolled at the Drexel Institute, where she studied with Howard Pyle.
Her work appeared in many magazines, such as Scribner’s, Saturday Evening Post, and Harper’s Magazine. I had an illustration for a story of Maxwell Struthers Burt in the last Christmas Scribner’s in black and white, an illustration for a story called “Kerfol” by Edith Wharton and one by Ellen Glasgow called “The Shadowy Third” the year before the war – 1916 – all in Scribner’s.
In the 1919 March supplement of International Studio, Eva Nagel Wolf, in an article on Abbott, remarked on her fairy tales;
At last she has a theme she can simplify or embroider to her heart’s content.
Mine was “The Minister in the Black Veil.” I did a book for Lippincott and George W. Jacobs. Elenore came to Rose Valley in 1911. Scribner’s is bringing out a book of my pictures for Grimms Fairy Tales this Christmas in the same set that Wyeth and Parrish have made famous. She would take photographs for later oil paintings, something illustrators were known to do.
She also did illustrations for many books, including Kidnapped and Treasure Island (Robert Lewis Stevenson), Swiss Family Robinson (Johann David Wyss), Old Fashioned Girl (Louisa May Alcott) and Grimm’s Fairy Tales. by Edward Shenton (multiple formats at archive.org)
Find more by Elenore Plaisted Abbott at your library, or elsewhere.
Elenore Plaisted was born in Lincoln, Maine.
Marjorie Abbott Harvey went on to become a well-known author of cookbooks. Elenore Abbott loves her fairy tales as one who never grew up, and no child who receives such a book will be disappointed… Elenore Abbott is not a surface clever Artist; her active, vigorous yet idealist’s mind is brought into subjection and guides the long sensitive fingers that hold the water color brush.
References: Bénézit; Fielding; Young; Art Annual 26, 1919; International Studio 67, 1919; DAM files.
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The best of which is “The Mother” and was published in the Christmas number, 1916, I think.She married C. Yarnell Abbott and lived for a time in Rose Valley, Moylan, Pennsylvania. She was a member of the Philadelphia Water Color Club, and the Plastic Club of Philadelphia.
In a letter dated July 3 (no year given) from Saranac Lake, New York, to Miss Gertude Brinklé, Pyle’s secretary, Abbott writes;
I’d like to mention only the work I was glad to have done… under Mr.
Pyle I did drawings, paintings for illustration for poems for Saturday Evening Post, Harper’s Magazine and Scribner’s and one of the illustrations for a book of Houghton Mifflin that was given to the clan to illustrate. (From Wikipedia)
More about Elenore Plaisted Abbott:Associated authors:Books by Elenore Plaisted Abbott:
- Abbott, Elenore Plaisted, illust.: The Flower Maiden, and Other Stories (Philadelphia: G.
W. Jacobs and Co., c1922), by H. C. Andersen, also illust.