Constance Richardson

Constance Coleman Richardson (1905–2002) was an American painter best known for her American Scene landscapes and interplay of light on figures, evocative of Edward Hopper. She attended Vassar College and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and was married to art historian and museum director Edgar Preston Richardson from 1931 until his death in 1985.

Biography Daughter of Christopher B. Coleman, secretary of the Indiana Historical Society and professor of history at Butler College, Richardson was born in Berlin before transferring to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she studied from 1925 until 1928.

Her first landscapes date to the summers the couple spent in Vermont and New York; she later worked along the Great Lakes before discovering the West, and many of her later works were painted in Wyoming. She exhibited widely and received numerous prizes.

Richardson relocated with her husband to Delaware in 1962 when he became director of the Winterthur Museum. She also painted portraits and genre scenes in addition to landscapes; her work has been described as reminiscent of Edward Hopper. The painting Fourth of July is owned by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. As of July 20, 2020, the Detroit Institute of Arts owns six of her works. Letters between Richardson and her husband are currently held by the Archives of American Art.