Mary Hortense Webster facts for kids

Mary Hortense Webster (1881–1965) was an American artist famous for her sculptures. She also painted, but her main focus was creating beautiful three-dimensional artworks. Mary trained with famous artists and later taught art herself, leaving a lasting mark on the art world.

Mary Webster's Life Story

Mary Webster was born in Oberlin, Ohio. She started her art journey by learning to paint at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. She also studied art in exciting places like Paris, France, at the Académie Julian, and in the Netherlands. She even learned from artists like George Hitchcock and Charles Hawthorne.

After some time, Mary decided to focus mainly on sculpture. She trained with a very well-known American sculptor named Lorado Taft. She worked with him at his Midway studios in Chicago. Mary eventually made Chicago her home. She was also one of the first members of the Women's Art Club of Cleveland.

Her Art Focus and Teaching Career

Mary Webster was best known for her paintings and sculptures. She often created portraits, which are artworks showing a person's face. She also made busts, which are sculptures of a person's head and shoulders. Her main work locations were Chicago, Illinois, and Portland, Ohio.

Besides creating art, Mary was also a teacher. She taught art in places like Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, and Owatonna, Minnesota. From 1910 to 1913, she was even the Head of the Art Department at the Portland Art Museum Schools. In 1921, a magazine called Magazine in Art praised her for keeping high standards in her work.

Remembering Mary Webster

In 1965, after Mary's death in January, her sculptures were honored at an exhibition. This event took place at the Cordon gallery. Mary was the president of the Cordon at the time she passed away. A special guest speaker at this event was Harold Haydon, an art professor from the University of Chicago.

What She Created

Mary Webster created many artworks, especially sculptures and portraits. Here are a couple of her notable pieces:

Sculpture of Horace Mann

Mary created a sculpture of Horace Mann sometime between 1905 and 1936. Horace Mann was an important American politician and educator. He is often called the "Father of the Common School Movement" because he worked to make public education available to everyone.

• Size: The sculpture was about 125.6 centimeters tall, 95 centimeters wide, and 5 centimeters deep.
• Material: It was made from Gilt Plaster. "Gilt" means it was covered with a thin layer of gold or a gold-like material.
• Where it is now: This sculpture is part of the Stanford University-Dispersed Art Collection.

Mary worked on this sculpture with her instructor, Lorado Taft.

Portrait of Mrs. Forest Bidwell

In 1916, Mary created a portrait titled Mrs. Forest Bidwell.

• This portrait was shown in a special art show called the "Catalogue of the One Hundred and Eleventh Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts" in Philadelphia. The exhibition ran from February 6 to March 26, 1916.
• At that time, Mary lived in Oberlin, Ohio.

Where Her Art Was Shown

Mary Webster's art was displayed in many important exhibitions and is part of various collections. You can find a detailed list of her exhibitions and collections here on the Illinois Women Artists Project page.

Some of the places where her art was shown include:

• The Paris Salon in 1906, which was a very famous art exhibition in Paris, France.
• The Cincinnati Museum in Ohio in 1916.
• The 111th Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1916.
• She contributed six times to the Annual Exhibition of Works by Chicago and Vicinity Artists at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) between 1918 and 1932.
• Her work was also part of the Annual Exhibition of Oil Paintings & Sculpture by American Artists at the AIC in 1924.
• Her art was featured in an exhibition about her teacher, Lorado Taft, at the Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in 1982.