Helen M. Knowlton

Helen Mary Knowlton, The Virgin, Jesus, Saint Agnes and St. John, after Titian (1477–1576). Date unknown (1848-1918). Worcester Art Museum Helen Mary Knowlton (August 16, 1832May 5, 1918) was an American artist, art instructor and author. She taught in Boston from 1871 until the mid-1910s, when she was in her 70s. Her instructor and later employer, William Morris Hunt, was the subject of a portrait she made and several books; she is considered his principal biographer.

Early life Helen Mary Knowlton was born on August 16, 1832, in Littleton, Massachusetts, the second of nine children born to J.S.C and Anna W. Knowlton.

She was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts and attended private and public schools.

In the 1880s she studied under Frank Duveneck in Munich, Germany.

In the summer of 1881 Knowlton was Duveneck's student in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he held art classes "between trips to Europe." She wrote later of the time, having said "East Gloucester was never so full of artists, and was getting to be called the Brittany of America." In 1881 and 1882, Knowlton traveled through Italy, France, Belgium and the Netherlands with Ellen Day Hale, who was her student in 1874; also along for part of the journey was Hale's distant cousin, the painter Margaret Lesley Bush-Brown.

Art career Beach scene, oil on board, 11 x 17", owned at one time by Essex Institute. In Boston, Knowlton was a painter, educator, author, between 1873 and 1897 at the Boston Art Club. another was portraitist Marie Danforth Page.

Upon Hunt's death, Knowlton was a contributor a fund for a dedicated room of his works in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She also helped to coordinate a retrospective of his work in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts and was his "principal biographer." She died at 85 years of age on May 5, 1918, in Needham, Massachusetts. She is buried in Worcester at the Rural Cemetery. Her works were exhibited in 2001 in the "A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston 1870–1940" show at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Landscape, after W.M. Hunt Portrait of William Morris Hunt, oil, 1880, Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts Study of a Head, oil. Date unknown (1845–1918). Worcester Art Museum The Virgin, Jesus, Saint Agnes and St. John, after Titian (1477–1576). Date unknown (1848-1918). Worcester Art Museum