Letitia Bonnet Hart

Letitia Bonnet Hart (1867–1953) was an American painter known for her portrait and figure painting.

Biography Hart was born in 1867 in New York. She was the eldest of three children of the Hudson River School painter James McDougal Hart Letitia's sister, Mary Theresa Hart (1872-1942), was also a painter. and with Edgar Melville Ward. (Her brother Robert Gorsuch Hart, a water-plant engineer, died while working in Mexico in 1906, at age 37.) The family lived at 94 First Place in Brooklyn and had a country home in Lakeville, Connecticut. Letitia Hart (seated) with her sister Mary Theresa Hart in their studio at 11 East 14th Street, from Metropolitan Magazine 's Feb. 1899 issue. Starting around 1885, Letitia Hart exhibited her work at venues including the American Water Color Society, Art Club of Philadelphia, Brooklyn Art Association, James Gill's gallery in Springfield, Mass., Louisiana Purchase Exposition, National Academy of Design (she received the Norman W. Dodge $300 prize there in 1898 for best painting by a woman), Pan-American Exposition, Union League Club of Brooklyn, and the Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. With her sister (who often posed for portraits) and father, she commuted from Brooklyn to a top-floor studio at 11 East 14th Street in Manhattan.

Around 1892 Letitia Hart traveled in South America. After her sister's death she moved to Florida. Hart died in 1953 in Eau Gallie, Florida, and is buried with her family in Green-Wood Cemetery. Paintings by her are in the cemetery's collection and at the Huntsville Museum of Art (Summer Portrait). Correspondence from her survives at the Archives of American Art (Charles M. Kurtz papers, Carnegie Institute records).