Minerva J. Chapman

Minerva Josephine Chapman (1858–1947) was an American painter. She was known for her work in miniature portraiture, landscape, and still life.

Early life Minerva Josephine Chapman was born December 6, 1858, in Sand Bank, now called Altmar, New York.

Education Chapman was financially able to live an independent life and pursue college and art education due to her father's success as a banker and tannery owner. At the same time, women were allowed entry into prestigious art academies in the United States and in France. and in the graduating class of 1878 In 1875 she attended the University of Chicago. She and her sister Blanche moved to Paris and Chapman attended Académie Julian before deciding to take private lessons from Charles Augustus Lasar, who encouraged Impressionist painting of still lifes and plein air landscapes. Three of her oil paintings were shown at a Chicago Institute of Art exhibition in 1898. Two were portraits of women and the other was an interior painting of a studio. In January 1908 she exhibited 34 miniatures at the Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition of 1907 to 1908. She was a member beginning in 1909 and was the first women president

At the beginning of World War I, Chapman traveled from Liverpool, England, aboard the SS New York in September 1914, ultimately bound for Arlington Heights in Illinois. By that time she had lived for 21 years in Paris, with trips to Chicago. During the war she lived in Chicago, Illinois and San Diego, California. She captured the 19th century independent, educated New Woman in her paintings, as described in the article Minerva J. Chapman's Miniatures: Costume and the New Woman.

Her oil painting, Garden of the Tuileries, Paris is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection. Chapman's work is also in the collections of the Mount Holyoke College, National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., and the Luxembourg Museum in Paris. or June 16, 1947 in Palo Alto at the age of 88. and in 1986 at the art museum of her alma mater, Mount Holyoke College.

Thirty of the 181 miniatures that Chapman made were exhibited at "Off the Pedestal: New Women in the Art of Homer, Chase, and Sargent" the Frick Art Museum in 2006. "New Women" were educated, capable women following the American Civil War. In 2007 her works were part of a traveling exhibition of students of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, including Robert Henri, Cecilia Beaux, Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, Eanger Irving Couse, and Elizabeth Jane Gardner.