Great American Artist: Caroline Morgan Clowes 23
Recovering the Paintings and Legacy of a Great American Artist: Caroline Morgan Clowes (1838-1904) by Bill Jeffway Through the extraordinary Caroline Morgan Clowes Collection, with its dozens of paintings, hundreds of sketches, photographs, and daguerreotypes, and thousands of pages from letters, diaries, event programs, and newspaper clippings, we are afforded a rare and personal insight into a woman born 182 years ago. In addition to the beauty and accomplishment reflected in Clowes’ work, we find a personal story of a woman’s persistence in a male-dominated field that resonates today.
Figure 1. Caroline M. Clowes, Buckskin, n.d. Oil on board. The Dutchess County Historical Society, The Caroline M. Clowes Collection, Gift of Linda and E. Stuart Hubbard, 2019. Buckskin was the horse that Caroline’s cousin Ambrose Hart brought back from the South upon his return from the Civil War. The date of this work, therefore, would probably fall early in Miss Clowes’ career, c. 1865-70. This, like all the Clowes works pictured in this article, come from the family home, “Heartsease” in La Grange, where they were created and where they were stored until donation to the Dutchess County Historical Society. Of the large number of works from this location—including paintings, drawings, diaries, and letters— a small proportion were dated or signed.
