Emily Parker Groom
Emily Parker Groom (1876–1975) was an American artist born in Wayland, Massachusetts. She remained an active painter until the age of 97, spending nearly her entire career in Wisconsin, and died in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Early life and education. As a child, she attended weekly art lessons under Miss Alida Goodwin, a teacher at South Division High School and All Saints Cathedral Institute, where Emily later graduated. She simultaneously received private painting lessons from her father. These experiences combined provided her with a unique early education compared to the primarily German-speaking community of artists in the area . She attended the Art Institute of Chicago with John Vanderpoel, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts under Edmund Tarbull, and participated in the Art Student's League in New York with Birge Harrison. Parker Groom also trained in London with Frank Brangwyn. Artistic career. Emily Parker Groom became a faculty member at Milwaukee Downer College as an art teacher, where she eventually created the art department in 1902. She also taught at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee. She took a break from teaching from 1917-1945, in order to focus on her painting. She built a studio named  Windover in 1917 with her sister Mary Groom in Genesee, Wisconsin. She participated in the Public Works Art Project, created by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, as a planner and an exhibiting artist. During the Depression years, there was a lack of major exhibitions and she did not participate in many shows or sell many works. During the Great Depression and her teaching term at the Layton School of Art "she participated in 'Grab Bag' sales to raise money to assist Layton Students." ("Grab Bag" sales are described as selling small work for dollar after it had been displayed for  a week in a specially organized exhibition, designated for these sales.) In 1952, Parker Groom and Marian Bode co-founded the Wisconsin Watercolor Society, the first Wisconsin art organization to be devoted exclusively to watercolor painting. She was also a member the Wisconsin Painters and Sculptors, the American Watercolor Society, the Chicago Gallery Association, Artists’ Equity, National Association of Woman Painters and Sculptors, Concord Art Association and the Philadelphia, and New York Watercolor Club. Style. Early work of Emily Parker Groom reflected an English style, as opposed to the German academic influence common amongst other Wisconsin artists. Later Groom used  an impressionistic style in artwork of urban and rural landscapes of Wisconsin. She is noted to have worked in various mediums, and a retrospective hosted by the Charles Allis Art Museum contained thirty-four images in chalk, charcoal, graphite, pastel and watercolor and her subjects range from flowers to urban and rural landscapes. She used the wet-on-wet technique "that retains a timeless, contemporary element." She also found a way to incorporate the texture of the watercolor paper to make a stucco exterior for buildings in her work. In the 1920s, Groom's work became more focused on watercolor  and painting en plein air. Exhibitions and major works. In 1904 she entered a work at the Tenth Annual Exhibition of Art Students League of Chicago titled "A Portrait of" "Mrs. Rollin B. Mallory." The following is a list of Emily Parker Groom's solo exhibitions: