Hôtel Baudy Giverny
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Portrait of Josephine Miles Lewis
Photograph held at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution (Ridgway Hall research material on Josephine Miles Lewis, AAA.hallridg, box 1, folder 4). Photographer and date not established.

Painter · American

Attested lodger

Josephine Miles Lewis

The first woman to graduate from the Yale School of the Fine Arts, and the lodger whose dates the register of the house has preserved most precisely.

  • Dates1865 — 1959
  • NationalityAmerican
  • DisciplinePainter
  • Place of birthNew Haven, Connecticut

Biography

Josephine Miles Lewis was born on 10 March 1865. She belonged to the first generation of women trained at the Yale School of the Fine Arts, and it is at Yale that two of her canvases are kept, “Girl in Sunshine” and “In the Orchard”. In Paris she entered the circle of the sculptor Frederick MacMonnies and his wife, the painter Mary Fairchild. The Childs Gallery in Boston devoted an exhibition of portraits to her from 10 to 22 October 1955, four years before her death on 11 May 1959. The National Academy of Design awarded her the Julia A. Shaw Prize. At the Yale School of the Fine Arts, where she studied under John Ferguson Weir and John Henry Niemeyer, she was the first woman awarded an undergraduate degree, in 1891. She lived in France from 1892 to 1897, then opened a studio in New York. She spent her summers at Scituate, Massachusetts, and settled there permanently in 1943; it is there that she died.

Giverny

She came to Giverny through the MacMonnies studio. Columbia University writes that “Lewis’s connection with Frederick MacMonnies extended to Giverny, where she seemed to be present as early as 1892”, and that she was mentored there by MacMonnies and his wife Mary Fairchild, who spent intermittent periods in the village. She did not come alone: on at least one occasion she returned with her sister Matilda, Janet D. Pulsifer and G. Hutchinson, after a journey in Holland.

Relation with the Hôtel Baudy

Six entries under her name, from March 1894 to April 1897, and one of them records not a stay but a move. On 8 April 1895 the register simply reads: “Mlle. Lewis, Maine, 8 avril 1895 — en loge a Giverny”. She does not leave: she takes lodgings in the village. The other dates are 5(?) to 20 March 1894, 23 April to 2 July 1894, 3 to 10 November 1894, 4 to 13 June 1896 and 13 to 20 April 1897. On the last two stays her sister Matilda is entered beside her, on the same dates.

Principal works

Landscape at Giverny (no established title) oil on canvas, about 1894. Two poplars standing at the edge of a meadow, a line of trees behind, a hill beyond. The only Giverny canvas of hers known to us, and it dates from the year of her two longest stays. Dimensions, location and inventory number remain to be established; the reproduction comes from a commercial database, reproduced by Columbia University.
Haystacks in Butry, France oil on canvas. Conical stacks in full light, a band of flowers in the foreground, the blue valley behind. This is not Giverny, but it is Monet’s motif painted in France by a woman of his circle. Date, dimensions and location remain to be established.
Jour de Pluie, or A Rainy Day oil on canvas, undated. Two young women in white about a round table, one writing, the other chin in hand. The canvas won its author the Julia A. Shaw Prize of the National Academy of Design. The known reproduction is that of Harper’s Weekly, 8 April 1916, page 358; the original is not located.

Key points

  • 1865Born — New Haven, Connecticut
  • Giverny1894 — 1897, six entries in the register
  • 1959Died

Sources

From the register

Under the same roof

The painters whose stay overlaps this one. The register establishes that they lodged in the house on the same days, and nothing more.

Read the register entries

Around them

Related artists

Portrait of Claude Monet Discover Claude Monet 1840 — 1926 French · Painter His arrival in Giverny is the most frequently cited starting point of the village’s reputation. Portrait of Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Discover Mary Fairchild MacMonnies 1858 — 1946 American · Painter A painter of figures and gardens, active in France for more than twenty years. Portrait of Frederick William MacMonnies Discover Frederick William MacMonnies 1863 — 1937 American · Sculptor and painter An internationally renowned sculptor, he also ran a teaching studio in Normandy.

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