Claire Shuttleworth, 1867 – 1930

Photo of Claire Shuttleworth. Buffalo Evening News, February 5, 1905, p. 5

Is there any life, I wonder, which brings one in touch with as many different types of humanity as that of the artist, which brings one so many interesting friends, of all classes, and is not that perhaps one of the reasons why we still keep on painting in spite of our many discouragements? (Claire Shuttleworth cited in The Buffalo News, May, 6, 1925, p. 6).

Claire Shuttleworth was born in 1867 in Buffalo, New York to prominent private banker Henry J. Shuttleworth, a native of London, England, and Laura J. Wheeler of Vermont. She had a sister, and a brother who founded the Banner Milling Co.

Claire first studied music at the St. Agnes School in Albany, where she discovered her interest in painting and drawing and eventually graduated with honors in both music and art. She then taught music for two years at the Gunnery Boy’s School in Washington, Connecticut. At the Buffalo Art Students’ League (for which she completed a charcoal drawing of the statue “Winged Victory”), Shuttleworth studied under Canadian painter George Bridgeman, the League’s head instructor in the 1880s. In an interview, she credited her training in the U.S. for laying a solid foundation for her future career (Buffalo Courier, March 2, 1897, p. 4).

When her sister Lizzie died in 1891, she willed all her belongings to 24-year-old Claire (Buffalo Morning Express, June 24, 1891, p. 6). Three years later, Claire left for Europe, beginning a series of trips to France and Italy that spanned a five-year period. On her first trip in May 1894, she sailed to France with muralist Frank Vincent Du Mond and his class of 40-50 young women artist, including Marie B. Coxe and Frances Plimpton. They spent the summer painting in Crécy-en-Brie, the charming town some 50 kilometers east of Paris, where Du Mond had brought his plein air sketch class.

In October 1894, Claire Shuttleworth and Frances Plimpton returned to Buffalo, where Claire had been elected treasurer of the Art Students’ League (The Buffalo Commercial, May 29, 1894, p. 10). That November, she presented the oils she had painted in Crécy at the studio receptions of the Market Arcade, receiving praise for the work she had accomplished – acclaim that would only increase in the years to come. One comment, which recurs in the reviews of future critics, is typical of the sexism directed at female artists that was prevalent at the time:

Another gift which Miss Shuttleworth has is one that is rare among women artists – the ability to develop (sic) a strength and force in her paintings that characterizes the work of men. There is very little about any of her canvases that indicate that they were done by a woman (Buffalo Courier, November 25, 1894, p. 13).

Claire Shuttleworth, "Late Afternoon, Crécy," c. 1900, watercolor. Cascadia Art Museum
Claire Shuttleworth, interior scene, n.d., gouache on paper. Invaluable

Beginning in the summer of 1894, Claire returned to Europe several times until 1898, sketching in Crécy-en Brie (summer 1894 with Dumond and his class; summer 1897), Italy (summer 1895, 1896, 1897, 1898), and Pont Aven (summer of 1897 with L. Grace Woodward and Buffalo portraitist and landscapist Frank C. Penhold). In Paris, she lived at the Girls’ Art Club for unknown periods of time and exhibited her works with the American Woman’s Art Association and the Salon des Artistes français:

  • 1896
    • Several water colors and oil paintings at the exhibit of the American Woman’s Art Association (The Buffalo Enquirer, February 4, 1897, p. 5)
    • An oil painting, “In an Italian Courtyard” (a girl carrying a copper pail in a shadowy corner) at the Salon des artistes français.
  • 1897
    • Several watercolors and oil paintings at the December 1897 exhibit of the American Woman’s Art Association (The Buffalo Enquirer, February 4, 1897, p. 5).
    • Several “À la Foire” and “Une rue à Pont Aven”) the April Salon des artistes français.
  • 1898
    • “Le Marché” at the April Salon des artistes français.

By 1896, she was associated with other addresses in the Club’s immediate vicinity, first with M.A. Moreaux at 106 bd. du Montparnasse (1896, 1899) then with the art framer and restorer M.P. Havard at 123 bd. du Montparnasse (1897, 1898), but these may have just been the places from which her works were sent to the Salon. It was common in this era for art restorers, dealers, or friends to submit works to the Salons on behalf of artists.

Académie Vitti, c. 1905. Wikipedia

Sometime between 1894 and 1898, Dumond, who was well-acquainted with the art schools in Paris, introduced Claire to the newly founded Académie Vitti (1889), one of the first Parisian art schools to accept female students and to allow women to sketch nude male models. Here, she trained with painter and muralist Raphaël Collin and painters Paul Leroy and Luc Olivier Merson, receiving a medal from the Académie for painting from life (ca. 1899). Among the other American women artists at the Académie Vitti in the 1890s were Sara S. Hayden, Janet Scudder, Gertrude Weill (who designed a poster advertising the school), and Enid Yandell. According to various newspaper accounts, during later stints in Paris Claire also trained at the Académie Julian (possibly with sculptor and painter Jean-Paul Laurens) and at the Académie Colarossi.

Claire Shuttleworth, "À la Foire," Catalogue illustré du Salon 19e année (1897). Hathitrust

In October 1898, she returned to New York City, where she was supposed to meet her father, only to discover that he had died in his room at the Hotel Imperial. In November 1898, Claire opened a studio for painting and teaching languages in Buffalo’s newly built Berkeley Apartments. The Buffalo Evening News published a brief description of her studio, where friends and visitors gathered for daily afternoon tea:

[…] spick and span and quite unlike the usual atelier […] The studio is interesting because it is very unlike to a woman’s workplace. Florentine carved oak chair of the 17th century, an old walnut kitchen bench from Flanders doing duty for a fashionable tête-a-tête under the weight of silken pillows, with some rare pieces of foreign pottery, are all that suggest “accessories,” everything else the production of the brush, among them the “Street at Pont Aven” was exhibited at Buffalo Society of Artists last spring (February 17, 1899, p. 11).

Claire Shuttleworth, "Road and Willows," ca. 1910. Academy notes / Buffalo Fine Arts Academy v. 7-9 (Jan. 1912-Oct. 1914). Hathitrust
Claire Shuttleworth, "River Wall, Seaway at Normandy," c. 1909, oil on board. Invaluable

When Shuttleworth opened her first studio, the art scene in Buffalo had not yet blossomed, as the “Social Chronicle” of The Buffalo Evening News bemoaned:

Buffalo so far has refused to take art up seriously, or in that lighter vein, as a fad. Talk as we will, put up our lorgnettes and look as much as we may at old masters, new masters and masters in between, we serve as a whole to perform the offices of a wet blanket whenever art and artists seek headway in our midst. Buffalo does, it is true, maintain an art school, but it is maintained meagerly […] Paris alone maintains only one or two less than a half hundred free night art schools, let alone day schools galore. But however much Buffalo lacks in art atmosphere and art patrons, we have here artists we may be proud to recognize and encourage: artists who have not only learned the best that American schools have to teach, but who have gone abroad and studied earnestly the technique which makes the French school famous, and who have afterward practiced what they have learned on the famous Italian skies and sunsets, on the picturesque peasantry of France and Holland, and who have now come home and settled down in our city, and only ask – sometimes in vain – that encouragement which every city rightfully owes its artists (January 17, 1899, p. 10).

Over the years, artists like Claire Shuttleworth, Alice B. Muzzey, Clara Sackett, Elsie (sometimes spelled Elise) Devereux, sisters Lilly and Della Garretson, and their male counterparts contributed to the burgeoning Buffalo arts scene. Their studios not only served as workshops for themselves and their students but also as social centers and exhibition spaces for private showings of their work. They also joined group shows, exhibiting with the Buffalo Society of Artists and the Albright Gallery, and gave talks about their experiences in Europe and elsewhere. In the words of an article in the Buffalo Evening News they “always sought to add the power of their brush to the growth of art in [their] own city” (November 17, 1899, p. 3).

From 1898 to 1907, Shuttleworth remained active in teaching, exhibiting, producing commissioned portraits and miniatures, and sketching in Buffalo and other parts of North America. Her sites of predilection included: Cazenovia, a small village in New York (1900 and 1904); Beau Pré, a small French village near Quebec, whose “inhabitants still retain the primitive manners and costumes of their French ancestors” (Buffalo Times, July 7, 1901, p. 17); and Gloucester, Massachusetts (1903). She also moved to a new studio in Buffalo (the Horton building) and opened another studio in Batavia, New York, where she taught painting and drawing.

Shuttleworth also participated in numerous group-exhibits and organized solo shows of her work, notably:

  • The Pan-American Exposition (1901)
  • The Buffalo Orphan’s Carnival (1904)
  • Exhibits mounted by the Buffalo Society of Artists
  • The Philadelphia Fine Arts Exhibit
  • The Society of American Artists
  • The Art Institute of Chicago
  • The St. Louis Exposition (Miniature of Miss Coxe, 1904)
  • The Albright Gallery (1907 – 7 "pictures")
  • The Berkey Library – solo show of 82 paintings and 6 miniatures
  • The Morgan Gallery – solo show 70 works
  • The Cazenovia Clubhouse – solo presentation of unknown works

Her works were also shown in France and England:

  • “Paysage” was exhibited at the 1899 Salon des artistes français
  • One of her miniatures was hung at the 1904 Salon des artistes français
  • Her miniature portrait of fellow artist Mary B. W. Coxe, was displayed at the 1905 Salon des artistes français. It was then presented in London at the December 1906 exhibition of the Women’s International Club, previously known as the Paris Club, of which she and Cecilia Beaux were the only American members

In April 1907, Shuttleworth left Buffalo to spend six months in Europe, visiting London, then Paris for the Salon exhibitions, and Crécy-en-Brie for sketching. In July, she was in Gisors, a small town in Normandy, where, according to Don Tomasco of the Buffalo Courier, she had established a private atelier in the Hotel des Trois Poissons (August 11, 1907, p. 16). Known locally as "Mme Claire," she stayed through September, the only artist in residence – a far cry from the Pont Aven community, which was teeming with artists from Buffalo and other parts of the world (Buffalo Evening News, July 17, 1907).

Between 1910 and 1912, she designed a summer studio and home, which she named Minglestreams, overlooking the junction of the Niagara and Chippawa Rivers in Chippawa Ontario. This is where she spent her summers, sketching, teaching classes, and generally observing the flow of the river (Buffalo Morning News, Feb. 9, 1913). Her love affair with the Niagara River area would lead to years of sketches and paintings of the river and the falls, earning her the title of “Mistress of woods and valleys as well as cataracts and falls” (Buffalo Truth, February 21, 1924, p. 7). She described her fascination with the region in an article for the Buffalo Arts Journal, later cited in The Buffalo News:

From childhood the Niagara has fascinated me. Even after study abroad and various exploration to sketching grounds near home the river still appealed to me as the least painted and most varied in subjects of the places I had visited […] In 1910 I happened to spend a few weeks in Chippawa, which then was a quaint, picturesque, little village and forgotten for a time by “progress” until it had almost the charm of an old-world hamlet, yet within easy access of great cities on both sides of the border and with a wonderful combination of land and water subjects for sketching. There, where the Welland and Niagara Rivers met, I built my summer studio and called it “Minglestreams,” and settled down contentedly to try and accomplish the big task of my life – 24 canvases which would show the varying phases of the river as I knew it and loved it. […] It took eight years of study along the shores before I succeeded in getting together the group of subjects which completed the task I had planned, and, […] the director of the Arnot Gallery in Elmira […] invited me to show the group at her gallery […] (May, 6, 1925, p. 6).

In the summers of 1926 and 1928, Shuttleworth returned to Europe (mainly England and France), but there are no details about her voyages.

Claire Shuttleworth

Claire Shuttleworth’s long and successful career as an artist, teacher, and mainstay in the Buffalo art scene continued until her death on May 7, 1930. Her forty-year career resulted in hundreds of paintings, sketches, miniatures, watercolors, portraits, landscapes, cityscapes, and waterscapes. An active member of a number of artist associations, she sketched and painted in many different places (England, Nova Scotia, Bermuda, Texas, Canada, Massachusetts, Niagara, Italy), but France remained one of her most cherished places. Though her career as an artist had begun in Buffalo, it really blossomed in Paris, particularly when she became a regular visitor and Salon exhibitor.

She was cremated in Buffalo and her remains were buried in Chippawa. She willed the Minglestreams studio to Ethel Louise Stern, and left several canvases to Harry Marsalas, who had carved many frames for her paintings.

Whatever success I have achieved is no credit to me [...] This was a gift to me and it is my duty to make the most of it. It is just one of the lovely things that has been given to me and I deserve no credit for it. Then too I was given the gift persistence which has aided and made possible the development of the first attribute (Buffalo Truth, June 11, 1925, p. 5).

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