Willie Betty Newman: Tennessee Woman Artist
by Stephanie A. Strass
Willie Betty was born January 21, 1863, on the Benjamin Rucker plantation in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Willie was a not uncommon given name for a woman in the 19th century; but later in life Willie Betty Newman rarely signed her paintings with her first name, preferring to use her initials, perhaps to disguise her gender.
In 1881 at the age of 17, she married Isaac Warren Newman, a pharmacist. She gave birth in 1882, to a son, William Gold Newman. Willie Betty and her husband apparently separated permanently not long after the birth of their son, for Isaac Newman doesn't figure again in her story.
Hers, however, was not to be a conventional 19th century woman's life. At the age of 22, Willie Betty decided to devote her life to art and left Tennessee for Ohio, leaving her son in the care of relatives. Between 1885 and 1890, she studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati under various instructors, including Thomas Satterwhite Noble, the director of the Art Academy, who also served as her mentor.
By 1890 she was included among the Academy's
noted students, and her work received favorable comment in the local press at
the annual student art show. Her success at the Art Academy of Cincinnati led
to a scholarship for study abroad. This scholarship was renewed at least once
and supplemented by a scholarship from the Cincinnati Museum of Art.
In 1890 Willie Betty Newman headed for Paris to study art, as many American students had done before. Madame Newman, as she was known in France, entered the Academie Julian in Paris and studied initially with Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and Tony Robert-Fleury. She later also studied with Adolph-William Bouguereau, Gustave-Rodolphe Boulanger, and Jean-Paul Laurens. She received an honor that was unusual for American students, male or female -- having a painting accepted for the Salon during her first year in Paris. Her painting entitled Etude de Vielle Femme (unlocated) was selected for the Salon of 1891.
Like many other American artists, Willie Betty Newman traveled in Europe, seeking out the picturesque scenes that were popular subjects of painting She traveled to Brittany in 1891-1892 where she painted a number of smaller canvases, primarily landscapes, seascapes and portraits of peasants. Her European paintings, those which have been located so far, depict, for the most part, peasant life and landscapes.
In 1892 she
lived in the Breton village of Quimperle, working on
one of her best known paintings, Le Pain Benit - Finistere. The painting
was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1894 and now hangs in the Centennial Club
in Nashville.
During her career, Willie Betty Newman had ten paintings accepted by the Paris Salon and one accepted for the Paris Exposition of 1900. Five of the Salon works were illustrated in the Salon catalogues, of which four have been located.
Newman returned to the U.S. in 1902. She considered settling in New York, but decided to return to her native state after two prominent women in Nashville offered an inducement in the form of ten orders for portraits at $1,000 each. Her friends at the Cincinnati Academy of Art strongly advised her not to settle in Tennessee and even offered to return her to France. They feared the South would not recognize her talent and that she would regret her decision.
Newman opened the Newman School of Art in Nashville in the fall of 1905. Her goals were ambitious for she attempted to use the French methods of instruction that she had learned in Paris. The school, however, was not a financial success and ultimately closed. So she turned to painting portraits, having learned like so many American artists returning from abroad, that the American buying public did not seem to want paintings of European scenes. Nor did the 10 portrait orders ever materialize.
Willie Betty
Newman spent the rest of her life painting predominantly portraits. There are
records indicating that she painted still lifes during this period, but few
have come to light. One can probably assume, based on her earlier career, that
portraits were not her first choice for subject, but they paid the bills.
She worked hard to establish her reputation in the States and took every opportunity to show her work. One of her paintings was accepted for the 1904 Universal Exposition at St. Louis. She participated in numerous exhibitions in Tennessee and was awarded the Nashville Museum of Art's highest honor, the Parthenon medal. She also won an honorable mention at the All-Southern Art Association exhibition in Charleston, S.C., in 1921.
In her last years, she was in poor health and painted very little. She died on February 6, 1935, in Nashville, virtually forgotten by all but her family and her hometown. Most of Willie Betty Newman's paintings are now in private collections, many with members of the family. Nearly two dozen works by Newman are also to be found in museums and organizations in Tennessee. The Centennial Club in Nashville owns four works by Newman. The Cheekwood Fine Arts Center in Nashville owns one of her Paris Salon paintings, En Penitence, as well as three other works.
Other
institutions with paintings by Willie Betty Newman include the Chattanooga
Regional History Museum; the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville; Vanderbilt
University; Watkins Institute in Nashville; the Morris Museum in Augusta,
Georgia; and the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., where a portrait of John K.
Bell, a former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee,
hangs in the Speakers’ Lobby.
There are also several books with reproductions of Willie Betty Newman’s paintings. The Paris Salon entry En Penitence is found in two books: Lois Fink's American Art at the Nineteenth Century Paris Salons, and William H. Gerdts' Art Across America: Two Centuries of Regional Painting 1710-1920 Another work by Newman, the portrait of John K. Bell, has been published in U.S. Architect of the Capitol: Compilation of Works of Art and Other Objects in the United States Capitol. A more recent publication which includes a still life is Gracious Plenty: American Still-Life Art from Southern Collections, by Estill Curtis Pennington.
Stephanie Strass and her husband collect paintings by women artists. The source of the above information on Willie Betty Newman is the artist’s granddaughter, Barbara Pryor, who has been researching her grandmother’s life and art. She is interested in knowing of the existence of other works of art by Willie Betty Newman. She can be contacted through Ms. Strass at strass@nev.com.