Ellen Frances Burpee Farr (1840-1907)

California School

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO MISSION ARCHES, circa 1895

(#19586)

Sight size: 9 x 7 inches / Board size: 9½ x 7 3/8 / 11 x 9 framed

Watercolor on Artist board

Signed lower left: “Ellen B. Farr.”

Provenance:           Elsa Wolf, Pasadena, California, circa 1930

     Ellen Farr was one of the early women artists of California.  She is best known for her still lifes of California poppies and Indian baskets, pepper trees and views of the missions.

Ellen was born in New Hampshire, and studied at the New Hampton Institute and the Thetford Academy in Vermont.  She wed Civil War hero Evarts W. Farr in 1861.  After his death in 1880, Ellen kept a studio in Boston until 1887, when she moved to Southern California.  She settled in Pasadena, and was invited to open a studio in the exclusive Raymond Hotel, a major resort

and winter residence for wealthy Easterners.  Her paintings, filled with iconic California images, were popular with the Eastern tourists who wanted momentos of the California southland.

     In Pasadena, Ellen forged a career as a highly successful artist and an important member of its cultural community.  In 1906, she left for a grand two year tour of Europe, but died suddenly in Naples, Italy on January 5, 1907.

Our gallery formerly handled THE PEPPER TREE which was her entry in the World’s Columbian Exhibition of 1893.  This painting was published in

INDEPENDENT SPIRITS: Women Painters of the American West 1890-1945,

page 46.