Alice E. Rumph, 1877 – 1957

Alice Edith Rumph was born in 1877 in Rome, Georgia to Cornelius Mandeville Rumph and Mary M. Mazyk Rumph (née Hume). She could trace her ancestry to the eighteenth century, when her great-great-grandfather, David Rumph, a German-Swiss immigrant, was deeded 100 acres of land near Charleston, South Carolina by England’s King George III (Montgomery Advertiser, October 24, 1902, p.11). Alice had one brother and a sister. 

Alice began drawing as a young woman and shared the drawing honor with classmate Lucy Coleman Dennis at the Birmingham High School graduation ceremony in 1895 (Montgomery Advertiser, May 18, 1895, 3). She then studied at the Birmingham Art School for four years under W.D. Parrish, and taught art classes at Lafayette College as well as in her private studio. By the age of 23, Rumph had already gained quite a reputation as an artist:

Miss Rumph will make illustrating her special work. She has already received great encouragement from various magazines, her drawings being regarded as extremely clever. Her portraits and miniatures have received the most favorable comments, and she has accomplished more than any young woman in Birmingham, with the exception of those who have studied abroad. She studied under Parish, and all her work has been done in the studios here (Birmingham Post Herald, March 25, 1900, p. 12).

In recognition of her talent, Robert S. Munger, one of the wealthiest men in Birmingham and the owner of the Continental Gin Company, a cotton gin plant with which Rumph's father had long been affiliated, gifted her a travel scholarship. He also supported pianist Edna Gockelt, "restricting neither young woman as to expense account or time spent in Europe" (Atlanta Journal, July 26, 1901, p. 8).

In April of 1900, Rumph and Gockel traveled first to England, then to Berlin, where Gockel remained through spring 1902, when she returned to the U.S. to serve as head of the Birmingham Conservatory. Rumph remained in Europe and moved on to Paris, where she planned to study and launch her career. 

Annie Kendrick Walker, of the Age-Herald in Birmingham, reported on Alice Rumph’s enthusiasm prior to departure:

I recall a little chat that I had with Alice Rumph just a few days before she sailed for Europe. She was so charmingly frank about talking of her ambitions, and with Paris all untried stretching before her, she could hardly wait for her day of sailing. She could talk of nothing else but of the work she intended to accomplish, and how very hard she meant to study from the very moment she was settled in the Latin Quarter (January 20, 1901, p. 10).

Rumph settled at the American Girls' Art Club in May 1900, describing it in an article  for her hometown newspaper, The Age-Herald:

This is to be a story of upstairs and downstairs and in my lady's chamber. In other words, I have often thought I would tell you about this funny old house we live in on this queer little street ‘‘de Chevreuse.” When I first drove into it, that April evening some months ago, I thought there was some mistake on the part of the cabman; but as he drew up to the great black door, I just knew he was off, and that I should never live in a place with an outside like a stone and a door like a barn. Since then my ideas of residence have recovered from the shock given by Parisian houses, and I begin to think our club a luxury instead of a big warehouse entered by a stable door, opening out into a back alley. Indeed, It is only a step to the Boulevard mont Parnasse [sic], which is quite a swell street, and lively enough, too. Once inside the door, you step into a paved court, surrounded on three sides by the house and on the fourth by a tiny garden, in which is the little chapel, St. Luke’s. On the second floor there is the library, the two salons and some bedrooms. Upstairs is where I live, and from the plan you will see that I am some distance from the tea room, quite a journey through all the long halls, dark as pitch until night, when the lamps send light where the day cannot. To get over there from my room, I must go down from the second floor, run across the balcony, run up to the third floor again, down the long hall I spoke of, and then, most dangerous of all, down a set of angular, steep steps which lead into the tea room. There is a pleasant tradition about this house, which claims that once upon a time it was a convent, so this perilous passage and suicidal staircase are known among us as the “Nuns’ Retreat,” supposing that it once led to some secret chamber on the fourth floor, which I have not planned for you, as it is still a mystery to me. The roofs are all I know of it, seeing those from my window across the street. One of my artist friends has a way of calling to me from my room by an acknowledged whistle we have adopted; so you can now see in what close communion we can be, knowing the house plan. When she whistles my window opens, or vice versa, and the matter is discussed across the court. I have always said I liked rambling houses, but now, living in one, I see that its ins and outs and queernesses do not make it at all charming. For instance, if in coming from my room downstairs the day is dark and the lamps yet unlit—if, I say, as I stretch out my hands, groping for the way, and strike my knuckles on some “unbeknownst” angle of the wall, my temper fails to be improved, especially if I miss the turn leading to the staircase and run my head against Lady Tatton's door, which is more than likely to fly open with a rasping demand, “Who’s there?” Then, too, another delusion and a snare lies crowded in these tiled floors, which are sure to have a tile loosened or missing in the very darkest corner. I love the library – a big, dim room, with polished floor and dark bookcases, two long tables and the little one where I am now writing. The legend says that our peaceful little garden is frequented nights by the spirit of a departed nun who still bewails some sin of her worldly existence. For my part, I believe this, with a slight addition – her spirit has passed into a big spotted, blue-gray cat, who sits solemnly on the Ivy-covered wall and looks at us as we pass into the chapel door, or parading in tuneful measures as the night falls over the roofs and the long, jagged shadows of the chimneys stretch themselves along the stones of the yard below. So much for romance. Later reports say that a boys’ school was herein installed, and so I feel sure that all haunting atmosphere has been long since dispelled. Indeed, if the boys failed to shock the troubled spirits hereabout, these lively, fun-loving girls will certainly carry out the mission more successfully (January 20, 1901, p. 10).

In Paris, Alice became acquainted with her surroundings by visiting Versailles, the Louvre, numerous galleries, and several art academies. That summer, like so many other residents at the Girls’ Art Club, she left Paris:

It was summer and everybody was getting out of Paris – the fashionable people to their country homes and students to any rural place that afforded them facilities for carrying on their work. Accordingly, I wandered into Holland and spent there a summer of mingled work and pleasure as I shall not soon forget. There I did my first painting abroad [...] (cited in the Birmingham News, August 2, 1902, p. 3).

Rumph stayed in the picturesque village of Rijsoord, in southern Holland, between Dordrecht and Rotterdam, where groups of American painters mainly from Paris flocked during the summer months between the years 1886 to 1914. She most likely boarded at the Noorlander pension, which had been specifically organized to accommodate visiting artists and art students, and where American artist Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley regularly brought the students she taught at the Académie Colarossi. In Paris, Hawley had actively exhibited with the American Woman’s Art Association from 1896 to 1899. According to the Birmingham Post-Herald, Rumph was enrolled in the plein-air classes of noted Canadian artist Laura Adeline Muntz, a friend of Hawley’s and an Academy Colarossi alumna (September 5, 1903, p. 6). While in Rijsoord, Alice completed numerous watercolors and etchings depicting village streets, cottages, and local people in their daily activities, which she later exhibited in Paris and in the U.S.

Returning to Paris in fall 1900, Rumph, like many of her compatriots, worked in several art academies, including Colarossi, with Alphonse Mucha:

In the fall then of 1900 I began my first studio work in Paris, and found many surprises and some disappointments awaiting me among its academics. There I studied among students of all nationalities in big, badly ventilated studios, and learned to know the French masters of today that I had heard so much of. Morning was always my time for work, while afternoons generally found me tired out, and so sick of the studio that I fled to the open air for refuge. It was then we took long rambles through the city, sometimes walking, but oftener on the top of a clumsy omnibus that rattled through the broad boulevards and narrow streets, threatening at every turn to throw off the load that encumbered it [...] (cited in the Birmingham News, August 2, 1902, p. 3).

As she became increasingly accustomed to the Parisian art scene, Rumph decided to forego the academies and work independently in private studios, notably that of Eduardo Leon Garrido:

Perhaps the most satisfactory point in one’s work is reached though when some little studio receives a picture and you begin to paint with your own north light and your own draperies and paintings on the wall, and your own arrangement of models and subjects. In academies one must do what authority dictates but with the freedom of a private studio comes freedom of one’s choice of both arrangement and critics. Then work goes on in peace until the critic arrives and even then he is not half so bad as he is in a school with forty other pupils before him when he has finished with you. One long winter working thus in perfect freedom made me wonder why I had not found that haven long before (cited in the Birmingham News, August 2, 1902, p. 3).

Rumph’s European travels yielded several successes. She showed a “Dutch Interior” in the March 1901 exhibition of the American Woman’s Art Association, held at the Girls’ Art Club. Several months after, her watercolor, "Devant la fenêtre," was exhibited at the Salon des artistes français in the Grand Palais. It was later shown in 1902 at the American Watercolor Society in New York City, and at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905. Rumph was so pleased about having one of her works accepted into the Salon that she wrote a letter from the Club to a friend, gushing about the honor. The letter was partially reprinted in The Birmingham News on May 2, 1901:

My dear Friend: I am writing tonight to tell you that congratulations are in order, for I am in the "Salon" […] I am duly elated over my success and all the more because I have absolutely no influence, having none of the prestige that some of the big schools give, as I have, as you know, worked in Garrido’s class, which is a private one. Everyone is congratulating me and saying how glad they are, because so many have been refused this year. Now I feel that my year’s work has been well crowned and I can depart on my trip to Italy with a clean conscience as well as an additional portion of self-esteem (5).

After visiting Rome, Venice, Florence, and various cities in Switzerland, Alice showed two drawings at the 1902 Annual Exhibition of the American Woman’s Art Association, which featured 200 paintings, pastel drawings, watercolors, and miniatures. Her first drawing was of a ballerina tying her slipper. The second represented a view inside the Girls’ Art Club through the iconic gate that separates the courtyard from the gardens. This etching was also shown at the 1926 annual exhibition of the American Fine Arts Society in New York City. It was described in The Birmingham News as a “[...] sketch of the old court yard at the American Art Students Club (Now the Women’s University Club in Paris). It is a ‘before dinner’ inspiration caught from the late afternoon sun on the picturesque windows of the old buildings, in which she lived for two winters” (January 31, 1926, 28).

It now hangs at Reid Hall, though we do not know when and how it came into its possession.

After nearly two years in Europe, Rumph returned to Birmingham in June 1902. She exhibited her work and opened a studio in the Watts Building, teaching oil painting, illustration, and sketching. Other artists, such as Della Dryer, Lucile Douglass, Edna Smith, and Willie McLaughlin, also had studios in the building and would become her lifelong friends. She published a full-page account of her studies and travels abroad in The Birmingham News on August 2, 1902, describing her life in France, her journeys to Italy, Holland, Germany, England, and Switzerland, and her brief academy training with René-Xavier Prinet, Frederick MacMonnies, Alphonse Mucha, and other teachers. The most poignant language was reserved to describe Paris, her adopted city:

And so we come back to Paris, which we find just the same gay, beautiful, encouraging, disheartening, flattering, indifferent, busy, idle, heart-breaking, joyous Paris. Paris, with its thousands of rich, thousands of poor, thousands of comfortable, and thousands of destitute—and thousands of students that sing in its streets, and slave in its studios, that ramble in its gardens, and eat at cafes, and dance at balls, and find themselves happy today and downcast tomorrow—and yet, we are never ready to leave, no matter what treatment we receive at its hands (3). 

The prospect of living again in Paris did not appeal to her, however,: "I may go there again during my vacation, but there will be no more long, delightful winters in the studios. I miss the life in Paris – what one gets there – but after a certain time, one wants other things that are not to be found in Paris. I don't think I am enough of a bohemian to live in Paris (Birmingham Post-Herald, September 24, 1903, p. 6).

In the U.S., Rumph’s career evolved in different directions, but she was always devoted to the arts and to enhancing the art scene in Birmingham, despite living and working in the Northeast for a good portion of her adult life.

Student

• 1903: Briefly studied illustration at the Chase School in New York City.
• 1908, 1909: Enrolled in Elliot Daingerfield’s summer course in Blowing Rock, North Carolina – he organized small classes at his summer home, Westglow (also called Winwood) with daily sketching trips in the mountains.
• 1910: Attended a summer program at the New York School of Arts in Chester, Massachusetts on arts, crafts, and design with Frank A. Parsons, where she received the prize for best painting from life.
• 1911: Attended the School of Fine and Applied Arts, where she also received a teaching diploma.
• 1911: Enrolled in the summer program on interior decoration at the New York School of Arts, and attended Saturday classes with Frank A. Parsons at the Art Institute of New York.
• 1917: Enrolled in a six-week French language course at St. Genevieve College in Asheville, N.C. While at St. Genevieve’s, Rumph visited a “reclamation camp for broken down soldiers” who were recovering from shell wounds or the effects of German mustard gas attacks, as well as the Azalea tuberculosis camp near Kenilworth, also filled with soldiers on the mend (Asheville Citizen-Times, August 25, 1918, 17). She planned to read to the convalescing soldiers in an effort to ease their suffering.

Artist

Rumph’s media included oils, watercolors, etching, woodblock printing, and lithography. She was especially interested in portraiture, miniatures, market scenes of the South (1907 – 1908), landscapes, cityscapes, and Southern architecture. In her early career, she traveled frequently to New York, judging that she needed to be in the center of the art world and bring back new techniques she had learned up North. Ultimately, she resided in New York City for about twenty-five years, teaching at the Beard School in New Jersey, participating in art exhibits, painting and etching in her studio or en plein air during summers in Cape Cod, the Berkshires, and elsewhere. She returned to Birmingham for good in 1942. 

During her later years, Rumph earned most of her commercial success by producing detailed etchings of historic American buildings. In 1934, she created a series depicting landmarks in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, working out a deal with the John D. Rockefeller Library and Foundation for her etchings to be sold in the Colonial Williamsburg gift shop (Ingham 136). In 1939, Rumph also contributed to the restoration of Savannah's historic Telfair Family Kitchens:

Alice Rumph, the well-known and distinguished American artist, [...] upon seeing the restored Telfair Family Kitchens in the Art Academy of Savannah, sought the privilege of making some drawings. And she has presented two exquisite etchings of the east kitchen, one to Charles Ellis, president of the Telfair trustees and the other to the academy! (The Atlanta Constitution, May 7, 1939, p. 46).

Art advocate in Birmingham

In 1908, Rumph co-founded the Birmingham Art Association with fellow artists Della Francis Dryer, Willie McLaughlin, and Mamie Holifield Montgomery:

[...] Miss Della Dryer, realizing that there was considerable of the art element in Birmingham, and that without some central plan, they would never arrive at any recognition, invited a number of her artist friends to her studio, then a little room up over some offices on First Avenue. Miss Alice Rumph was there, and Mrs. Joseph Montgomery, Miss Dryer, and Miss McLaughlin. It was a bleak November day, and sitting around a little barrel stove with unfinished canvases on the easels and others on the walls and with a confusion of brushes and tubes about them, these ambitious lovers of art organized the club which was to keep the spark alive. [...] Miss Lucille Douglass was away in Paris at the time, but was elected a charter member (The Birmingham News, April 16,  1916, p. 45).

The Club’s objective was to mount exhibitions that featured local talent, study the history of art, keep up with current art events, and bring together everyone in Birmingham who was interested in art, whether they were they artists or not:

[...] In the past the Art Club held a number of exhibitions under most adverse conditions. Our galleries were the upper floors of stores, which were always poorly lighted and almost inaccessible. They were usually excellent exhibitions but they failed to arouse any interest on the part of the public and sales were negligible. From time to time, we gave theatrical entertainments, tableaux, and living pictures, which were a success in every way except financial (The Birmingham News, January 26, 1936, p. 62).

Rumph advertised the first exhibition with a poster, which recalled her trips to the Netherlands and the work she had produced under Alphonse Mucha. Every year thereafter, a contest determined who would design the poster for the upcoming exhibition.

The Club began with just 12 members, eventually growing to 100 by its 30th anniversary. They also secured a meeting and exhibition space in Birmingham’s Public Library:

But the exhibition and its accessories are not all of the work of the Birmingham Art Club. Not by any means. Indeed, the exhibition is but a definite time to bring before the public the work that has been done during the year and it is said that the work would not go on but for the Art Club. Without the Club, art would die in Birmingham, many think. Or rather it would have died in Birmingham because it would be hard to kill it now that such root has taken. But the club has made of Birmingham an art center of Alabama and thereabouts (The Birmingham News, April 16, 1916, p. 45).

In addition to its annual exhibits, the Club also hosted educational activities, including guest speakers (Frank A. Parsons, for example, was invited to discuss design and interior decoration), and study groups on Greek, French, Italian Renaissance, American art, and illustration. The Birmingham News chronicled the Club’s varied activities, including the tableaux presentations of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat (February 18, 1914, p. 8). Over time, the Club began to urge its members to devote certain funds to buying works from local artists on a yearly basis to build a collection. This initiative was the "[...] driving force behind the establishment of the Birmingham Museum of Art" (Knight 32).

Aside from her work with the Birmingham Art Club, Rumph gave lectures and wrote about her travels, interior decoration, and color harmonies in one’s home: choosing, framing, hanging pictures, learning what is wrong with one’s house decorations, styles of rooms, furniture, ornaments, managing wall space.

Interior Decorator

After taking classes in interior design in New York (1911), Rumph decided to pursue decorating professionally, with the idea of bringing inexpensive furnishings and her knowledge of colors and balance to everyday homes, breaking with the tradition of interior design being focused exclusively on mansions, hotels, or clubhouses. She and her sister opened a gift shop in 1912, where they sold arts and needle crafts, including lampshades and boxes, embroidered table runners, and tooled leather mats they had made. From 1915-1916, Rumph worked as an interior decorator for a prominent furniture company, creating cottage and porch furniture.

Exhibitor

Rumph frequently mounted exhibits of her own work and that of her students in her studio and other spaces. She also participated in group shows and frequently won prizes for her posters, watercolors, etc.

• From the beginning, the Birmingham Art Club regularly included Rumph’s work in its annual exhibitions. In 1925, it sponsored a special solo exhibit for Rumph at the Axis Club, featuring 40 oils, watercolors, sketches, and etchings  that depicted her travels in the United States, France, and Italy. The show received a rave review in The Birmingham News on March 29, 1925, which declared: “Miss Alice Rumph has always done beautiful work and since she left Birmingham she has broadened and improved, due to her many opportunities, which is very evident in her more recent contributions in the world of art” (18).
• By 1929, Rumph consistently exhibited with the American Society of Etchers, New York Watercolor Club, the Philadelphia Print Club, the Washington Watercolor Club at the Corcoran Gallery
• In late 1930, Rumph and etcher Lucille Sinclair Douglass, former 4 rue de Chevreuse resident and member of the Birmingham Art Club, exhibited at the Milch gallery. Rumph and Douglass also lived near one another in Greenwich Village in the 1930s (Birmingham News, November 23, 1930, p. 28).
• In 1934, Rumph and Alabama artist Anne Goldthwaite, also a former Girls’ Art Club resident, were represented in the International Exhibition of Contemporary Prints at the Art Institute of Chicago, which featured artists from 21 countries in North America, Europe, and Asia. Rumph’s etching “In the White Abbey” appeared alongside Goldthwaite’s etching “On East Tenth Street” and Goldthwaite’s lithograph “The Water Hole” (The Birmingham News, August 5, 1934, p. 25). According to the Birmingham Post-Herald, she and Goldthwaite shared an apartment in NYC (February 1, 1940, p. 4).
• 1935: Solo exhibition at the Birmingham Library.
• 1938: Exhibition of the Southern States Art League, High Museum, Atlanta.
• 1942: Solo exhibit at the Birmingham Library, with works organized in four groups: France, New York, the South, and Williamsburg, Virginia.

Teacher

Throughout her life, Rumph taught private lessons for children and young adults, including special art classes for boys. She specialized in free hand drawing and perspective, illustration and design, and sketching outdoors. By 1944, Rumph was still teaching art in her Birmingham studio on 20th street to children and adults. She also taught in public and private schools as well as colleges:

• 1903-1911: Taught at the Margaret Allen School for Girls in Birmingham.
• 1906: Rumph and several other teachers took their students on a summer tour of Europe, visiting England, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and Paris.
• 1911: Public school supervisor in New Jersey.
• 1916, 1917: Taught at Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia.
• 1918: Taught at St. Genevieve's College in Asheville, North Carolina.
• 1919: Taught at Miss Veltin's School for Girls in New York City
• 1920: Taught at The Park School and other private establishments in Baltimore.  
• 1922 – 1942: Rumph ended her career in education at Miss Beard’s School for Girls in Orange, New Jersey, where she taught for 20 years, eventually serving as chair of the art department. She brought her class to Europe in the summer of 1923.

Traveler

In her forties and fifties, Rumph regularly returned to Europe for visits with colleagues and groups of art students. 

• In the summers of 1923 and 1924, she went to France (Tours, the Brittany coast, Douarnenez, Quimper) and Italy (Florence, Naples, Amalfi Coast).
• In 1925, Rumph chaperoned a group of young women in Europe for 7.5 months, where they stayed in Paris, then one month in Spain, and finally Italy.
• In July 1927, the Atlanta Constitution noted: "Alice E. Rumph, Carrie L. Hill, and others, are painting in Normandy and other picturesque spots" (4).
• In early 1928, she returned to Europe (Corsica) and visited North Africa (Tunis)  – traveling with Carrie Hill, Della Dryer, Willie McLaughlin, Sylvia Pizitz –“following the gypsy trail is far more fascinating than working in the studio” (Paladium Item, February 27, 1928, p.1). The women preserved their impressions on canvas in paintings that recalled these travels.

In the last decade of her life, Rumph and her fellow Birmingham Art Club founders saw their cherished dream come true: the Birmingham Museum of Art opened to much fanfare with a $2 million collection in 1951. Naturally, Rumph and the other founders were celebrated at the museum’s opening party, and a photo of the four smiling, triumphant women was published in The Birmingham News (April 9, 1951, 5).

Alice Rumph died at the age of 80 in 1957. Her obituary, published in The Birmingham News on August 30, 1957, fittingly described her as a pioneer artist and teacher (35):

Sources