page_title: Harry Watrous
section_title: Marriage and family
hierarchical_section_title: Harry Watrous / Personal life / Marriage and family
caption_attribution_description: English: Elizabeth Watrous Medal for Sculpture, awarded by the National Academy of Design, designed by Robert Ingersoll Aitken in 1914; the misspelling of "Elizabeth" was never corrected.
context_page_description: Harry Willson Watrous was an American artist who received an academic education in France. His paintings included genre scenes, stylized figural works, landscapes, nocturnes, portraits, and still lifes. His 1913 painting The Drop Sinister has been called the first known portrait of an American interracial family. He is perhaps best known for his enigmatic paintings of sophisticated women, often darkly dressed and seen in profile.
context_section_description: In 1887 Watrous married Elizabeth Snowden Nichols Watrous (1858-1921). Her father, William Snowden Nichols, was a member of the New York Stock Exchange, and she grew up in the posh Grymes Hill neighborhood of New York. She too was an artist, having studied in Paris under Jean-Jacques Henner and Carolus-Duran at "the studio of the ladies." (Women were not allowed entry to the École des Beaux-Arts.) Henner gave the couple one of his paintings as a wedding gift.
  From 1908 Elizabeth had her own studio at the Gainsborough Studios in New York. She was also a novelist, author of It: Being Our Individual Magneto (1911), and another novel entitled Ti. In 1914 the Elizabeth Watrous Medal for Sculpture was established, awarded by the National Academy of Design. The medal itself was designed by Robert Ingersoll Aitken. Although Elizabeth's first name was misspelled on the medal, the error was never corrected.
  Elizabeth opposed women's suffrage. In 1910, as a member of the National League for the Civic Education of Women, she headed a special committee charged with "instructing artists in the subject of anti-suffrage."
  In 1882, at age 22, her younger brother William Gilman Nichols became a partner in the high-end furniture and decorating company Herter Brothers; business analysts R.G. Dun & Co. described him as "a young man of decided artistic tastes, of good character and habits & well fitted for his present occupation." Nichols was president of Herter Brothers from 1891 until its dissolution in 1906. His marriage in 1893 to Herman O. Armour's daughter Mary was given the front-page headline "Marriage of Millionaires" in one newspaper. From 1900 the couple resided at a sprawling waterfront estate called Petronia in Rye, New York. Harry Watrous painted a portrait of Nichols, to whom he also made a gift of his painting The Line of Love. After Nichols's death at 49 in 1909, his widow and children continued to reside at Petronia.
  Elizabeth's niece (daughter of her younger brother Erickson Norman Nichols) was the aviation pioneer Ruth Rowland Nichols.
  Harry Watrous's younger brother Walter was a frequent figure in sporting and society pages. ("There is no more popular clubman in New York," said one newspaper.) After a scandalous divorce (his wife left him for their next-door neighbor, her best friend's husband), Walter withdrew from society. His sudden death in 1903 led to more unwanted attention from the press when it came out that he had a new wife and a residence in Atlantic City completely unknown to his friends and family. Both Harry and his mother felt obliged to comment on the situation to reporters from the New York Times and the New York Tribune. A large photo of the presumed widow dominated the front page of the Evening World. (A court would later rule that Katherine Ballou was a common-law wife and that the estate of Walter Watrous was not responsible for her $5825 debt to a dressmaker.)
  In 1914 Watrous inherited a substantial estate. "By the will of his mother, Mrs. Ruth A. Watrous, who died Oct. 19, and disposed of about $260,000, which was filed for probate, Oct. 29, Harry W. Watrous gets all jewelry, paintings, books, horses, carriages, and household effects, and the residuary estate amounting to $175,000."
  Harry and Elizabeth Watrous had no children.
caption: Elizabeth Watrous Medal for Sculpture.
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