page_title: Eleanor Norcross
section_title: Education and early career
hierarchical_section_title: Eleanor Norcross / Education and early career
caption_attribution_description: English: Exhibit in the Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, USA. This artwork is in the public domain because the artist died more than 70 years ago. Photography was permitted in the museum without restriction.
context_page_description: Ella Augusta "Eleanor" Norcross was an American painter who studied under William Merritt Chase and Alfred Stevens. She lived the majority of her adult life in Paris, France as an artist and collector and spent the summers in her hometown of Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Norcross painted Impressionist portraits and still lifes, and is better known for her paintings of genteel interiors.
  Her father provided her a comfortable living, under the proviso that she would not sell her paintings. With a life mission to provide people from her hometown the ability to view great works of art, Norcross collected art, made copies of paintings of Old Masters, and systematically documented decorative arts from the 12th through the 19th century. Her funding and art collection were used to establish the Fitchburg Art Museum.
  In 1924, her works were shown posthumously in Paris at the Louvre and Salon d'Automne, where Norcross was the first American to have had a retrospective. Her works were also shown the following year at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
context_section_description: Norcross studied at Boston's Massachusetts Normal Art School, now the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, to prepare to teach art. Living in Fitchburg, she commuted by train to the school in Boston. Norcross earned her teaching certificate by 1876 and taught drawing in the Fitchburg schools for a year. Norcross moved with her father to Washington when he was elected to the House of Representatives. A "witty and lively conversationalist", she acted as his hostess in the capital and beginning in 1878, Norcross studied art in New York City under William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League of New York for up to five years. In June 1883, she sailed for Paris to study with Alfred Stevens at Chase's suggestion. She and a few other women studied with the Belgian artist during the winters of 1883 and 1884.
caption: My Studio, 1891, oil on canvas, Fitchburg Art Museum, Massachusetts
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