biography of Esther FAHEY (c.1887-1976)

Birth place: NYC

Death place: Stockton, CA

Addresses: South Carolina and New Orleans, before 1917; Wash., DC, 1920; Potomac, MD; Stockton, CA

Profession: Portrait painter

Studied: with her father, A. Edmonds; Cooper Union College; ASL; …cole des Beaux Arts, Paris

Work: portrait of James L. Orr, (Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives), U.S. Capitol

Comments: Born Esther Edmonds. Fielding (1926 ed.) states that she was the daughter of artist A. Edmonds (see entry). In 1910 she opened a studio with her father in Columbia, SC, and may have also worked in New Orleans (where her father exhibited in 1915). Esther married William Fahey in 1917. By 1920 she was in the Wash., DC area, where she remained most of her life. She died in California at the home of one of her daughters. The inclusion of Topp as part of her name appears in the revised edition of Fielding (1986) and in McMahan and Petteys; this may be an error, possibly caused by the presence of another artist, Esther Topp Edmonds (see entry for Esther Topp) of Pittsburgh, who was active about the same time. See also A. Esther Edwards Fahey.

Sources: Fielding, Dictionary (1926 ed. lists as Esther Edmonds; 1986 ed. lists as Esther Topp Edmonds); McMahan, Artists of Washington DC; Petteys, Dictionary of Women Artists;