Louise Upton Brumback (1867-1929)

If the odds are still stacked against success for women artists, think what they must have been like in the early twentieth century. It took a very special kind of woman to succeed in painting then, someone with the strong character of Louise Upton Brumback (1867-1929).

Louise Upton, as she was before she married, chose to paint because of her great uncle, William Page, who had been President of the National Academy of Design when she was a young girl. However, her father, a banker, incurred huge losses when speculating in oil, and in late 1882 he embezzled large amounts of money from the bank which he owned to try to cover those losses. His bank collapsed as a result, and the following year ...