biography of Margaret W. Lesley BUSH-BROWN (1857-1944)

Birth place: Phila., PA

Death place: Ambler, PA

Addresses: Newburgh, NY, 1886-88; Newburgh & NYC, 1890-1910; Wash., DC, 1910-c.1937; Ambler, PA, 1937

Profession: Painter, etcher, pastelist, miniature painter, muralist

Studied: PAFA, 1869 & later with Thomas Eakins (1876-80, several months in 1882, 1884);Christian Schussele; Phila. Sch. of Des. for Women, early 1870s; Paris with Emile-Auguste Carolus-Duran, 1880; Acad. Julian, Paris, with Lefebvre, Boulanger & Tony Robert-Fleury, 1880; etching with Gabrielle de V. Clements, Phila., 1883

Exhibited: Paris Salon, 1883 (as Margaret White Lesley); Boston AC, 1884-87; PAFA, 1887-99, 1916; "Woman Etchers of America," NYC, 1888; NAD, 1891-99; mural, "Spring" for Ladies' Reception Room of the Penn. State Building at the 1893 Columbian Expo; SC (exhibited with her husband); Atlanta AA (exh. with her husband & daughter, Lydia); Corcoran Gal., 1911 (solo); Corcoran Gal. biennials, 1923, 1926; Soc. Indep. Artists, 1920, 1927; Doll & Richards Gal., 1923 (solo); New York Etching Club; AIC; Nat. Arts Club, NYC; BAC; Charcoal Club, Balt.; Women's Art Club; 1901 Pan.-Am. Expo, Buffalo, NY; St. Botolph Club; Women's Art Club, NY, 1901-02; South Carolina Inter-State & West Indian Expo, Charleston, 1902 (med.); Pan.-Pacific Expo, San Fran.; Wash. Soc. FA; Soc. Wash. Artists; Wash. WCC; NAWA; Appalachian Expo, 1910 (med.); Asheville (med.); NYWCC; Union Lg. Club.

Member: Womens Art Club; Arts Club, Wash.; Nat .SMP; Phila. Arts Club; Wash. Soc. FA; Wash. AC; Soc. Wash. Artists; Wash. WCC; PAFA (fellow); NAWA; Wash Soc. Mur. Paomters; Nat. Arts Club, NY; Nat. All. Unitarian Women.

Work: Blue Ridge, NC; NMAA; Pub. Lib., Raleigh, NC; Am. Philosophical Soc., Phila.; Board Room, Southern Railway, Wash., DC; Wash. AC (portrait of husband, Henry Kirke Bush-Brown); NMAA (portrait of Ellen Day Hale); Univ. Penn.; PAFA (self-portrait); Nantucket Hist. Assn. Archival material: Bush-Brown Family Papers, Sophia Smith Coll., Smith College, Northampton, MA

Comments: She specialized in portraiture. The wife of Henry Kirke Bush-Brown (they were married in 1886) and close friend of Ellen Day Hale, she traveled to Paris 1880, 1882; lived in France and Italy, 1888-90. She made regular trips to the Mid-West in search of portrait commissions and often made drawings for her her husband's sculptures. Her daughter Lydia became a well-known designer, her son James a landscape architect, and her son Harold was a professor of architecture at the Georgia Inst. of Technology in Atlanta. She gave the lecture, "Address Before New York Unitarian Club on the Relations of Women to the Artistic Professions" (1901).

Sources: WW40; McMahan, Artists of Washington, D.C.; P. Peet, Am. Women of the Etching Revival, 51-52; Fink, American Art at the Nineteenth-Century Paris Salons, 365 (as Margaret White Lesley)