Lucy Taggart

Lucy Martha Taggart (March 7, 1880 – October 9, 1960) was an artist and art educator from Indianapolis, Indiana, and the daughter of Thomas Taggart, a successful hotelier and influential Indiana politician. Recognized as a talented and versatile artist during a career that spanned the first three decades of the twentieth century, she studied with several noted artists, such as William Merritt Chase, John Henry Twachtman, Kenyon Cox, William Forsyth, Otto Stark, Charles Webster Hawthorne, Cecilia Beaux, and Harriet Whitney Frishmuth. Taggart, who was especially known for her portraiture, received the John Herron Art Institute's J. Irving Holcomb Prize in 1922, the Hoosier Salon's Merit Award for figure composition in 1925, and the Hoosier Salon's Merit Award in 1926 for best picture painted by a woman. Her work is represented in the collections of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Taggart sold her art and exhibited at a number of prestigious shows in the Midwest and eastern United States that included the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Society of Western Artists exhibitions, the Grand Central Art Galleries, the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, Hoosier Salon exhibitions, and at the John Herron Art Institute. Taggart abandoned her life as a practicing East Coast artist in 1929 and returned to Indianapolis, where she taught painting and portraiture at the Herron Art Institute (1931–34) and served on its board of directors (1915–58). Taggart had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances that included leading artists, authors, and politicians of her era. She was also active in numerous art, civic, and cultural organizations in Indiana and the eastern United States.

Early life and family Lucy Martha Taggart, born on March 7, 1880, in Indianapolis, Indiana, was the second of Thomas and Eva Dora (Bryant) Taggart's six children. She was named after her mother's aunt, Lucy Viola Inscho Bryant, and her father's mother, Martha Kingsbury Taggart.

Lucy grew up in Indianapolis as a member of a socially and politically prominent family. Her father, Thomas Taggart, is considered the "undisputed boss of the Democratic machine for the first quarter of the twentieth century." He served three terms as the mayor of Indianapolis (1895–1901), as chairman of the Democratic National Committee (1904–1908), and was appointed as a U.S. Senator in 1916, but lost the seat that autumn in a special election. At the time of Lucy's birth, her father was working as a clerk for the N. and G. Ohmer Company's dining hall at Indianapolis's Union Depot. He had immigrated to the United States from Ireland with his parents in 1861 at the age of five and grew up in Xenia, Ohio. Thomas moved to Garrett, Indiana, in 1875 to manage DeKalb House, a depot hotel, and relocated to Indianapolis in 1877. He married Eva Bryant, whom he met at Garrett, in 1878. While living in Indianapolis, Thomas became a successful Indiana politician and hotelier, whose business interests included hotels in Indianapolis and the French Lick Springs Hotel, a renowned mineral spa resort in Orange County, Indiana.

Education Taggart developed her artistic talent from childhood and also learned to play the violin. She graduated from May Wright Sewall's Girls' Classical School in Indianapolis. In 1898, when her father was beginning his third term as mayor of Indianapolis, she began her first year at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

After the death of her older sister, Florence, from a yachting accident in the Gulf of Mexico in 1899, Lucy returned to Indianapolis and became First Daughter of the Indianapolis mayor. In the autumn of 1899 Taggart did not return to college. Instead, the nineteen-year-old moved to New York City to study art. Taggart lived in an apartment on Upper West Side and studied at the Chase Art School with William Merritt Chase, a fellow Hoosier who had been living and working in the city since 1878. She also studied at the Art Students League of New York from 1899 to 1900, where her instructors included John Henry Twachtman, Kenyon Cox, and Walter Appleton Clark.

In addition, Taggart studied with "some of the nation's most able artists." She was among the early students enrolled at the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis, where her instructors were William Forsyth and Otto Stark, two of the noted Hoosier Group of painters. At Herron, Taggart attended Forsyth's daytime class in 1906–07, a summer class in 1907, and in the 1908–09 academic year. She also studied with East Coast artists Charles Webster Hawthorne, Cecilia Beaux, and sculptor Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, who became her mentors. and an art studio at Amyvale, the summer home her parents built in 1915–16 at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Taggart also kept a studio at her brother's home, called Mount Airie, near French Lick, Indiana, about two miles from the family's French Lick Springs Hotel.

In 1919 Taggart's father distributed "the bulk of his fortune" to his wife, Eva, and their five children. Taggart's new home, named Tower of the Four Winds, was completed in 1929. It was designed by Boston architect Ralph Adams Cram in the French farmhouse style; Henry Davis Sleeper designed its interior.

Taggart sold her art and exhibited at a number of prestigious shows in the midwestern and eastern United States throughout the first three decades of the twentieth century.

Between 1925 and 1931 Taggart was a five-time exhibitor in the Hoosier Salon, a juried show that featured the work of Indiana artists. The annual exhibition was held during this period at the Marshall Field and Company's Picture Galleries in Chicago. Taggart's exhibited works included Still Life and Eleanor (1925), Carnival (1926), Summer (1927), Young Girl in Green (1929), and Janet (1931). Eleanor won the Hoosier Salon's Merit Award for figure composition in 1925; Carnival won a Merit Award in 1926 for best picture painted by a woman.

In 1929, the year that her father and sister-in-law died, Taggart abandoned her life as a practicing artist on the East Coast, returned to Indianapolis to care for her mother and the Taggart family home, and became an art teacher. Taggart taught painting and portraiture at the John Herron Art Institute from 1931 to 1934, although her involvement with the Institute began in 1915, when she was elected to the first of several terms as a member of its board of directors. She continued to serve on the board until 1958. Taggart donated her time as a faculty member at the school without compensation. She also served on the school's arts committee, helped raise funds, attracted publicity to the school, and donated artwork.

Throughout her adult life Taggart was active in numerous art associations in Indiana and in the eastern United States, most notably the Art Association of Indianapolis, National Arts Club (New York), American Federation of Arts, North Shore Art Association (East Gloucester, Massachusetts), Grand Central Art Galleries (New York), National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, Provincetown Art Association, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

After her mother's death in 1937, Taggart became the family matriarch. In the last decade of Taggart's life, declining health caused her to sell the family home in Indianapolis and move into a nearby apartment, but she retained her home at Eastern Point, Massachusetts, and Mount Airie, her brother's home in French Lick, Indiana. Taggart's artwork is included in private collections and represented in the collections of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Bust of Tommy T. Young (1924) at the Indianapolis Museum of Art