page_title: Mary Brewster Hazelton
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Mary Brewster Hazelton / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Mary Brewster Hazelton, The Letter, by 1916 when she won the Newport Art prize
context_page_description: Mary Brewster Hazelton was an American portrait painter. She attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she was later an instructor. Among her other achievements, Hazelton was the first woman to win an award open to both men and women in the United States when she won the Hallgarten Prize from the National Academy of Design in 1896. Her portrait paintings are in the collections of the Massachusetts State House, Harvard University, Peabody Essex Museum, and Wellesley Historical Society. The professional organizations that Hazelton was affiliated with included the Wellesley Society of Artists, of which she was a founding member, and The Guild of Boston Artists, of which she was a charter member. She lived her adult life with her sisters in the Hazelton family home in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
context_section_description: Women did not win non-gender specific awards until 1896 when Hazelton won the National Academy of Design's First Hallgarten Prize for her oil painting In a Studio. It was determined to be the best oil painted made by a person under the age of 35 in the United States that year. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston awarded her the first Paige Traveling Scholarship in 1899. Hazelton won an Honorable Mention at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York in 1901.
  Hazelton had a studio at the old Harcourt Building in Boston in 1904, when a severe fire burned the life's work of several artists including Hazelton, Joseph DeCamp, and William M. Paxton. In the aftermath, a group of artists planned for a new building, which became Fenway Studios (30 Ipswich Street). Hazelton was among the initial group of artists that signed up, and arranged for studio 304. From 1906 to 1940, she had a studio at Fenway.
  In 1912, the Wellesley Hills First Congregational Church commissioned Hazelton, who was a member, to paint wall murals for the church. One mural depicts the four virtues—truth, charity, justice, and faith—in eight-foot figures of three women and one man. For instance, the male figure carries a sword and scales to represent justice. She also created murals of the Four Evangelists and a representation of the Trinity.
  During World War I, Hazelton designed a Liberty Loan campaign poster, using her painting Victory's Record. She exhibited The Letter and Reverie at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, California, in 1915, where she won a bronze medal. She won the Popular Prize in Newport, Rhode Island in 1916 for The Lady in Black. She also won a prize for The Letter at Newport. John Singer Sargent considered her "one of the foremost portrait painters of her time", according to Wellesley author Jennifer A. Jovin.
  Hazelton was a Wellesley Society of Artists founder and treasurer, charter member of The Guild of Boston Artists, and an early member of the Copley Society. She was a member of the Concord Art Association, American Federation of Arts, and Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts.
caption: The Letter, 1914, which won the Newport Art prize in 1916[1]
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