About Evelyn Cary

Name variants

Evelyn Rumsey Carey, Evelyn Rumsey
  • Biography from the Archives of askART

    Evelyn Cary biographical photo
    Buffalo, New York artist Evelyn Rumsey Cary is best known for her design of an Art Nouveau style poster depicting an Indian princess at Niagara Falls. She painted "The Spirit of Niagara", the official emblem of the Pan American Exposition, in 1901, and it was used in Pan American advertising. It now hangs in the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, in Buffalo, New York.

    She also is noted for her genre works and portraits including a portrait of Charlotte Mulligan in the Twentieth Century Club, which Charlotte founded.

    Evelyn was the wife of Dr. Charles Cary, whom she married in 1879, and aunt of sculptor Charles Cary Rumsey. Evelyn Rumsey was also the daughter of Bronson C Rumsey. She studied at the Art Students League of Buffalo with Alfred Quinton Collins and was a member of the Buffalo Society of Artists, which she served as President in 1897.

    Exhibition venues included the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901 that featured her poster "The Spirit of Niagara", and the 1902 Expo in Charleston, South Carolina. She was also active in planning exhibitions at the Albright Art Gallery.

    She was a not only an artist, but also a women's suffragist and patroness of the arts. Her poster 'Women's Suffrage' was one of her contributions to that cause.

    Sources include:
    website: www.ah.bfn.org
    Peter Falk, "Who Was Who in American Art"

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