Clara Taggart MacChesney (sometimes McChesney) (1860/61-1928) was an American painter and writer known for her figurative painting, landscapes and “scenes and people of Holland.”Petteys, Chris, Dictionary of Women Artists: An international dictionary of women artists born before 1900, G.K. Hall & Co., Boston, 1985.
Biography Born in Brownsville, California, Clara Taggart MacChesney moved with her family to Oakland when she was young where her father, Joseph B. McChesney, was principal of Oakland High School.
MacChesney began her art studies in San Francisco with Virgil Williams at the California School of Design, before moving to New York City to continue her studies with H. S. Mowbray and J. C. Beckwith.Opitz, Glenn B, editor, Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers, Apollo Book, Poughkeepsie NY, 1986, p. 565 This was followed by a move to Paris, where she enrolled in the Académie Colarossi and studied with Courtois.
MacChesney exhibited watercolors at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and was awarded a medal for her work. An article in The San Francisco Call announced that she had placed two paintings in the 1900 World's Exposition in Paris, and remarked that: "Both American and foreign artists have referred to Miss McChesney as 'America's foremost woman painter.' " She would later exhibit at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, winning a bronze medal.Art in California: A survey of American art with special reference to californian painting, sculpture and architecture, past and present, particularly those as those arts were represented at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, essays by Bruce Porter, Mabel Urmy Seares, Alma May Cook, A Sterling Calder, Louis Christian Mullgardt and others, originally published by R.L. Briener, Publishers, San Francisco, Reprinted Westphal Publishing, Irving, California, 1988, p. 171
She also wrote and published pieces for New York art publications, “frequently on her lifelong friend Elizabeth Nourse.”
MacChesney lived in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California in the 1920s. She wrote about Carmel-by-the-Sea and its pageant and drama in the New-York Tribune.
She died in London on August 6, 1928.
Gallery
Works A Good Story (Portrait of Robert Loftin Newman), (1900) Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Still Life with Plate and Kettle, National Arts Club, Manhattan, New York CityStill Life with Plate and Kettle, from SIRIS. Hay Barges, San Francisco, Oakland Museum, Oakland, CaliforniaHay Barges, San Francisco, from SIRIS. Portrait of Governor George C. Pardee (1911), California State Capitol, SacramentoGeorge C. Pardee, from SIRIS.
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