Grace ALBEE — the first female graphic artist ever to receive full membership in the National Academy of Design
Disclaimer: The information provided in this episode comes from multiple sources and is not my scientific studies or discoveries. Check the references for more details. Thank you!
Welcome to HerArt podcast, a project for art lovers, especially art created by women. In this episode, we will talk about Grace ALBEE, an artist that stands as an important American Regionalist printmaker of the twentieth century. Her career spanned more than sixty years, during which she produced more than two hundred and fifty prints from linocuts, woodcuts, and wood engravings. My name is Nata Andreev and I am going to tell you seven curious facts that you didn’t know about the first female graphic artist ever to receive full membership in the National Academy of Design.
Curious Fact #1
Albee was first exposed to a wood engraving as a child when looking through her grandfather’s old books. A precise and exacting personality such as Grace’s was inclined toward this painstaking and meticulous medium.
Curious Fact #2
Despite her father’s disdain for the frivolous art world, the young woman attended Rhode Island School of Design and there met her artist husband, Percy F. Albee, sealing her art destiny.
Curious Fact #3
It was in 1928 that the Albees departed Providence and enthusiastically made their way to the artistic mecca of Paris. With five boys to care for, the young mother managed to take her first and only lessons in wood engraving with Paul Bournet. From this point onward, Grace immersed herself in the wood engraving medium and would pursue no further instruction other than her own experimentation and self-tutelage. Skillfully rendered drawings using highly durable papers from the orient, Albee would handprint her images.
Curious Fact #4
According to Christina Weyl, who researched Albee as part of her senior thesis at Georgetown University, “the greatest indication of Grace Albee’s success as a professional printmaker was her admission to the highly selective membership of the National Academy of Design as an Associate in 1941 and as a National Academician in 1946. Not only was she the second woman in this history of the Academy to receive the Associate distinction in the class of Graphic Arts, but Grace Albee was also the first female graphic artist ever to attain full Academician membership.”
Curious Fact #5
Also, Mrs. Weyls states that “during the 1930s and 1940s, the most prolific decades of her career, Albee won prestigious awards and was showered with accolades from art critics. Through numerous purchase prizes, her prints were accessioned into the best print collections in museums throughout the United States and abroad.”
Curious Fact #6
Grace said that she took up wood engraving as a hobby because it offered a distraction from her worries.
Curious Fact #7
Albee produced over two hundred prints in a fifty-year career span as a wood engraver and became noted as a keen observer of the world around her, be it local scenery of Paris, Pennsylvania farm country, or the Rhode Island seacoast.
Thank you so much for listening to the eight-episode of HerArt podcast — a project for art lovers, especially art created by women. If you want to follow more of what we do, find us on Facebook and Instagram. And don’t forget to tune in next month, when I am going to tell you about Mimi PARENT— incorrigibly wild and absolute force in Surrealism.
References
Bert Gallery | National Gallery of Art | Georgetown University Library
