M. Evelyn McCormick

Mary Evelyn McCormick (December 2, 1862 – May 6, 1948) was an American painter.

Early life and training Mary Evelyn (Eve) McCormick was born on December 2, 1862, to Irish immigrants in Placerville, California. By 1867, the family had moved to San Francisco, where her father's occupation was listed as "barkeeper" or "liquor dealer". After completing grammar school she trained in the early 1880s at the Irving Institute, a private academy for college-bound girls, where she received her first professional lessons in art. While a student at the Institute, she exhibited her painted porcelain at the California State Fair (1881) and at the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute Fair (1882). Here she was awarded an Honorable Mention for oil painting in 1886 and the Avery Gold Medal for her study of chrysanthemums in 1888. She befriended students who later became prominent in the art world, including Isabel Hunter, Mary DeNeale Morgan, Mary Williams ( Kate Carew), and Guy Rose. She fell passionately in love with Rose and followed him to Paris in 1889. Both studied painting at the Académie Julian under Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant. At this time she reportedly began her long friendship with Sarah Bernhardt. McCormick and Rose also spent time painting in the tiny village of Giverny, where Claude Monet lived and worked; she was influenced by Monet, Camille Pissarro, Georges Seurat and other French Impressionists. In 1891, she exhibited her canvas A Garden in Giverny at the Salon and her Afternoon at Giverny at the Academy of Arts, Berlin. Both artists returned to California in 1891. At the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago she displayed two oils at the Palace of Fine Arts: Mission at San Luis Rey and Morning at Giverny. She also exhibited her painting Cactus Garden in the California Room at The Woman's Building at the Exhibition. In July 1889, she acquired rooms in Monterey's Old Customhouse to begin a series of sketches on "historic Monterey", but moved in 1902 to the nearby Pacific House. At the Del Monte Art Gallery she served on the jury and hanging committee between 1909 and 1911 and was a member of its advisory committee in 1916–17. In July 1910, she contributed her oils to the Fourth Annual Exhibition of the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club and four years later she helped to entertain William Merritt Chase during his Carmel Summer School. On her return she exhibited at the Hotel Del Monte and contributed to the Statewide Annual Exhibitions of the Santa Cruz Art League (1928–1930). During the Great Depression she was commissioned by the WPA to paint the crumbling but charming old Monterey adobes for posterity. Between 1936 and 1947, she was a frequent and popular exhibitor with the Carmel Art Association. California Artists, DeYoung Museum, 1915; Gump's (San Francisco), 1924. Old Custom House, Monterey, Mural 1935, 1939. Golden Gate International Exposition, 1939.

Works held in museums Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California. Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California. Monterey Museum of Art, Monterey, California. Robert Louis Stevenson House, Monterey, California.