Betsy Flagg Melcher

Margaret Elizabeth Flagg Melcher (April 8, 1900 – April 21, 1991) was an American miniature portraitist who was the daughter of noted architect Ernest Flagg.

Early life and education

Melcher was born in New York City on April 8, 1900. She was a daughter of Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) and Margaret Elizabeth (née Bonnell) Flagg (1882–1978). Her father was the architect of many famous buildings, including the Singer Building, the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington.

Betsy graduated from Miss Spence's School and was a member of the Junior League, for whom she made illustrations.

Career Melcher is known for painted miniature portraits. She studied under Cecilia Beaux, Mabel Rose Welch, and Alfred Hoen. She painted portraits of Marguerite Yourcenar, Brooke Astor, August Belmont, Jr., Samuel Eliot Morison, and Mary Parkman Peabody.

In 1942, she was awarded the Levantia White Boardman Memorial Medal of the American Society of Miniature Painters. In 1951 at the fiftieth annual exhibition of miniatures—antique and contemporary—of the Pennsylvania Society of Miniature Painters, she was awarded the prize for "a miniature of outstanding worth".

She served as president of the American Society of Miniature Painters. Melcher, an investment banker, was the son of John Stevens Melcher, a well known attorney, and Margaret Greenleaf (née Homer) Melcher. He was also the great-grandson of Paran Stevens, one of the proprietors of the old Fifth Avenue Hotel. Ursula Ward Melcher (b. ), who married Comte Marc de Fontaines de Logéres, of Château de Legeres in Ardèche in 1953. Prince Edouard de Lobkowicz was best man at the wedding.

Upon her death in 1991, she was buried in Forest Hill Cemetery in Northeast Harbor, Maine.

Descendants Through her second daughter Ursula, she was a grandmother of three, Guy de Fontaines de Logéres, Aymeric de Fontaines de Logéres, and Marc de Fontaines de Logéres Jr. "Ernest Flagg", watercolor on ivory, National Gallery of Art. formerly (2014) in the Corcoran Gallery of Art