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Gelatin Silver Print
3 x 4 1/2 inches
Provenance: Gloucester/Rockport area
Eleanor Parke Custis (1897 – 1983) was a direct descendant of Martha Washington from her first marriage. She never married and lived most of her life in Washington, D.C.[2] After the death of her father, with whom she lived till 1960, she moved to Gloucester, Massachusetts.[3]
Initially she began her art career as a painter, creating watercolors. She started to took photographs in the 1930’s. Eleanor Parke Custis used Bromoil Process, invented in 1907, using bleaching a print on bromide paper in order to remove the blackened silver. The areas of a picture which need to be dark then painted with paint, using a brush. Custis studied at the Corcoran School of Art with Edmund Tarbell and Henry B. Snell. She was a member of the American Watercolor Society, the Boston Art Club, National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors and other art associations.
Eleanor Parke Custis participated in more than 880 exhibitions during her lifetime.[4] She had several exhibitions in Grand Central Art Galleries in New York City.[5]
Solo
1925 Arts Club of Washington. Watercolors.[2]
1940 Brooklyn Museum. Solo exhibition.[2]
1945 Grand Central Art Galleries. Solo exhibition.[5]
1947 Smithsonian Institution. Solo exhibition.[2][6]
1996 Bruce Museum of Arts and Science. Port of Dreams: The Photography of Eleanor Parke Custis .[4]
Collections
Works by Eleanor Parke Custis are in permanent collections of many American museums, including Indianapolis Museum of Art.[7]
1) “Eleanor Parke Custis”. Retrieved 2018-10-22.
2) “Approved biography for Eleanor Parke Custis”. Retrieved 2018-10-22.
3) Peterson, Christian A (2012). Pictorial Photography at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts: History of Exhibitions, Publications, and Acquisitions with Biographies of All 243 Pictorialists in the Collection.
4) Zimmer, William (1996-08-18). “Subjects From Many Angles, a Photographer’s Work”. New York Times. Retrieved 2018-10-22.
5) “Eleanor Parke Custis. A Street in Cairo”. haddadantiques.com. Retrieved 2018-10-22.
6) “Penguins Three”. Retrieved 2018-10-22.
7) “A Moroccan Doorway by Eleanor Parke Custis”. Retrieved 2018-10-17.