Isabelle Sprague Smith

Isabelle Sprague Smith, also Isabelle Dwight Sprague Smith (November 11, 1861 – December 28, 1950) was an American artist, teacher, and school principal until the mid-1920s. Her students donated the Isabelle D. Sprague Smith Studio to the MacDowell Colony, where she was a member, by 1918. She was director of the People's Institute of New York. Sprague Smith was president of the Bach Festival in New York, and the founder of the Bach Festival in Winter Park, Florida in 1935.

Personal life and education Isabelle Dwight was born on November 11, 1861, in Clinton, New York, the daughter of Benjamin W. Dwight and Wealthy J. Dewey Dwight. She attended Dwight School in Clinton, in which her father was the founder and principal, and lived at 29 W. 68th Street in Manhattan beginning by 1903. Charles was seriously ill with pneumonia and died on March 29

Hilda attended Velton School for Girls. She studied politics, history and economics and graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1909. where he worked at General Electric as an engineer.

In 1935, Sprague Smith had a Spanish-style house built for her in Winter Park, Florida, that was designed by James Gamble Rogers II. Hilda died in 1942. After a brief illness, Sprague Smith died on December 28, 1950.

Career New York Sprague Smith was an art teacher, and the principal of Veltin School for Girls from 1900.

She worked as an artist, and had a Carnegie Hall studio by 1903. Sprague Smith was a director of the MacDowell Club She was a member of the MacDowell Colony

She helped found which was founded by her husband. He was its director until his death in 1910.

Florida She founded the Bach Festival in Winter Park, Florida, in 1935. Through "sheer force of will, [she] created the choir, soloists, musicians, audience and funds necessary for the project." The annual concert has been held the months of February and March at the Knowles Memorial Chapel at Rollins College and beginning in the late 1940s was broadcast over a national broadcasting station.

She received an honorary degree from Rollins College in 1939. She managed the festivals activities until 1950. It is Central Florida's oldest operating performing arts organization and the third-oldest continuously operating Bach Festival in the United States.