Martha Simkins

Martha E. Simkins (1866–1969) was an American painter, based in Texas, known for her depictions of interiors with figures, still lifes and portraits. She has been called a late-Impressionist-influenced artist.

Biography Simkins was born in 1866 in Monticello, Florida, United States, to Eliza Trescott ) and Judge Eldred J. Simkins. In 1871, the family moved to Corsicana, Texas.

Training Around 1893, Simkins travelled to Manhattan with her mother and three siblings so she could enroll at the Art Students League of New York. There she studied with several influential and highly regarded American Impressionist painters including Kenyon Cox, Emil Carlsen and William Merritt Chase. By 1901, she had moved back to Texas to teach art at North Texas Normal School in Denton and stayed there for several years. In 1925, with higher demand for her portraits, she stayed in the Northeast year round and decided to spend her winters in New York and return to Woodstock each summer. and entered her work in exhibitions there. The artist is buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Corsicana, Texas.

Selected exhibitions The Fort Worth Annual Exhibitions of Selected Paintings by Texas Artists in 1926-1928, 1930 and 1936 The Klepper Club Exhibition in 1951 "Martha Simkins Rediscovered" traveling exhibition in 2002 and 2003

Memberships The Pen and Brush Club (1918), New York National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors