Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer

Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer (January 7, 1873 – June 24, 1943) was an American illustrator, painter, and printmaker who painted and illustrated Tennessee society and other objects and people, including the state's women and children. As a printmaker, she pioneered the white-line woodcut.

Early life and education

Hergesheimer's 1937 portrait of U.S. Speaker of the House Joseph W. Byrns, Sr., now on display at the United States Capitol

Hergesheimer was born on January 7, 1873, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to parents Charles P. Hergesheimer and Ellamanda Ritter Hergesheimer. She was encouraged to create art in her childhood.

Hergesheimer was the great-great granddaughter of Charles Willson Peale, a Philadelphia artist who named one of his daughters Sophonisba after the Italian artist, Sofonisba Anguissola. Hergesheimer chose to use Sophonisba as her first name. and then went on to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts for four years. She was considered by Chase to be one of his finest students, and spent the summer of 1900 studying at Chase's Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art on Long Island.

This allowed her to study abroad in Europe for three years, where she trained at the Académie Colarossi and exhibited at the Paris Salon.

Career As a result of having her work including in a 1905 traveling exhibition organized by the Nashville Art Association, she received a commission in 1907 to paint the portrait of Holland Nimmons McTyeire, the Methodist bishop who convinced Cornelius Vanderbilt to endow Vanderbilt University.

She also conducted art classes in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where her circle of friends included fellow artists Frances Fowler, Sarah Peyton, and Wickliffe Covington.

Death Hergesheimer died on June 24, 1943, in Davidson County, Tennessee. Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, Tennessee United States Capitol, Washington, D.C. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee Two Red Roses Foundation, Palm Harbor, Florida