Alice Acheson

Alice Acheson ( Stanley; August 12, 1895 – January 20, 1996) was an American painter and printmaker.

Life Born in Charlevoix, Michigan, the daughter of artist Jane C. Stanley and the granddaughter of John Mix Stanley; her father, Louis Stanley, was a railroad lawyer. She grew up in Detroit.

She majored in art at Wellesley College, where among her classmates was the sister of Dean Acheson, who introduced the couple; the two married in May 1917, the same month she graduated from college.

She continued her artistic studies both before and after moving to Washington, D.C., with her husband, taking lessons at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Corcoran School of Art, and the school at the Phillips Collection. From 1919, she was active as an artist in Washington, eventually joining and exhibiting with the Society of Washington Artists, from which she received an honorable mention in 1940. She was also an active member of the Washington Water Color Club, the Artists Guild of Washington, and the National Association of Women Artists.

Acheson was described as a fashionable woman who, though she took scant interest in foreign affairs, was devoted to her husband and would defend him against any ill feeling. The couple were the parents of three children, all of whom survived her, as did six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Works Acheson worked in pastels, watercolor, and oils during her career, progressing from a representational style to something approaching abstraction. an undated landscape in oil; a 1975 watercolor view of Phnom Penh; and a 1970 collage titled The City. Two undated watercolors are owned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Other pieces are owned by the Phillips Collection, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum. Her work was formerly in the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and may be found as well at American University and in the Barnett-Aden Collection. A vertical file pertaining to Acheson's work is at the library of the Phillips Collection; other papers may be found with her husband's private documents at the Yale University Library. She is also featured in some materials held among her husband's official papers at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum. Paintings and further biographical details can be found on the website of Simonis & Buunk.