Elizabeth Coffin

Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin (1850–1930) was an American artist, educator and philanthropist who is known for her paintings of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Well-educated and accomplished, she was one of the "New Women" of the 19th century who explored opportunities not traditionally available to women. She was the first person in the United States to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree and was the first woman admitted to the Hague Academy of Fine Arts. She opened a school in Nantucket that had been only open to men and offered several types of trade and crafts work courses to both genders.

Early life Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin, nicknamed "Lizzie", into a Quaker family. She was the daughter of Andrew G. Coffin and Elizabeth M. Sherwood Coffin. Her father was born on Nantucket, Massachusetts and her mother in New York City.

She was an eighth-generation descendant of the original Nantucket settlers Tristram and Dionis Coffin.

Education She studied at the Friends Seminary in New York City before attending Vassar College, the first woman to gain admission to this school. Coffin studied at the Hague Academy for three years and received medals for anatomy, composition, perspective and antique drawing. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from Vassar College in 1876;

Career

Art Coffin began to summer regularly on Nantucket, starting in the 1880s, and moved there in 1900. She won the Norman W. Dodge Prize at the National Academy again in 1902.

She was one of the "New Woman" of the 19th century successful, highly trained women artists who did not marry, like Ellen Day Hale, Mary Cassatt, Elizabeth Nourse and Cecilia Beaux. About 1890 Coffin made a self-portrait. Along with Hale and Nourse, these women "created compelling self-portraits in which they fearlessly presented themselves as individuals willing to flout social codes and challenge accepted ideas regarding women's place in society. Indeed, the New Women portraits of the 1880s and 1890s are unforgettable interpretations of energetic, self-confident and accomplished women."

Coffin was a member of the Brooklyn Art Guild and the Art Students League of New York. Frances Lehman Loeb collection, Nantucket Historical Association and The Coffin School. Her students included women from the Goldenrod Literary and Debating Society which was established in 1895 for girls. Coffin reopened the school during a period when the whaling industry, which had been the economic backbone of the island, had ended. The trades helped to create new opportunities for men and women.

Personal life In 1910 Coffin was living at 30 Remsen Street in Brooklyn, New York. She left for Europe, intending to spend two years there. On Nantucket, she lived at 23 Lily Street.

In the death of Elizabeth R. Coffin on June 21, the class of 1870 has lost not only one of its best loved members but also a woman who, like her class-mate Ellen Swallow Richards, made a distinguished contribution to American life.|1870 Class Correspondent Mary A. Mineah, Vassar Quarterly, November 1930 The exhibition discusses:

...the various elements that encouraged and supported the independence and work of women on Nantucket using Maria Mitchell and other island women of her time and today as examples. Whaling, the isolation of the island, and Quakerism all played roles in providing a unique environment in which Nantucket women had freedoms which their counterparts in the rest of America and the world did not during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These strong, independent Nantucket women not only contributed to the community of Nantucket, but also to the national and global communities.

Gallery