Eleanor Norcross
Encyclopedia
Introduction
Eleanor Norcross (1854–1923) was an exceptional woman artist in the 19th century. The majority of her life had been spent living and painting in Paris, but her heart was always in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. She left her work and her fortune to found an art museum and teaching center in her beloved hometown of Fitchburg. When she died of cancer, at Pearl Hill, Fitchburg, the Norcross summer house, she'd already shipped back numerous barrels and trunks of priceless decorative arts, the future inventory of her museum d'espagne. How did a girl raised in one of the Commonwealth's model industrial cities in the 19th century take such an interest in art and culture, so much so that she wanted her fellow townsfolk to benefit from her collection—not just during her lifetime, but in perpetuity?
Eleanor Norcross (or "Ella" as she was for most of her early life), had some distinct advantages that contributed towards the course her life took. First, she was extremely bright and a child of the upper middle class. Her material privileges included the kind of education only available to those on the top of the social pyramid. The second is rather sad: at the age of 14, she lost her mother Susan. This can be seen as an advantage only if you take the view that lacking a female parent meant the absence of an influence to steer her into conventional female paths: marriage and motherhood. Third, she was educated in the last quarter of the last century, a period when women's education was just beginning to take off. Finally, one of her lifelong friends, Frances Vose Emerson, sprang from one of New England's leading educational families, so an example of service and patronage was provided very close to home.
How did a girl from a mill city in the middle of New England decide to become a painter and later found a museum? What circumstances factored in every step she took, and how did these ideas emerge? Thousands of girls grew up without a mother, thousands of girls received higher education. Yet Eleanor kept being part of ever smaller groups—she was one of 27 students at Mass. Normal Art School when she first began attending, and just one of two art teachers in Fitchburg when she began working in the schools. There is no evidence that she made any close male or female friends in Washington, and when she moved to New York City, she would have been one of a dozen or so students in the studio of William Merritt Chase. Very little personal writing survives, and virtually all the text that she wrote after age 30 have to do with the objects she was shipping back home to Fitchburg. However, the roots for all her interests can be seen in some essays she wrote between the ages of 17 and 18 for the magazine at Wheaton. The person who is confident and imaginative, and already thinking about a "castle d'espagne."
Fitchburg played a crucial part in the formation of Eleanor's social conscience and interest in cultural education. Originally inhabited by Nashways, this rolling, glaciated terrain is split by the Nashua River, which provided salmon and transportation route to the indigenous peoples and later a source of power for the mill owners and industrialists. Europeans settled in the area in the early 18th century, and the town separated itself from the neighboring community, Lunenburg, before the Revolutionary War. The first paper mills arrived in the early 19th century, and growth was continuous from that point forward.
Eleanor Norcross was fortunate to be born and raised during a particularly interesting period in the town's history, a period when transition was particularly swift and dramatic. She was fortunate, too, to have been the surviving child of a mother who set an example of executive ability and organizational skills during the Civil War, and a father known both as a canny litigator and the new city's (incorporation came in 1873) first mayor, and later state representative.
In New England, strong community-minded, even altruistic women have been an integral part of the landscape since the days of Anne Hutchinson. Fitchburg produced a number of "fabulous females" (in the words of former Fitchburg Historical Society director Miss Eleanora West). These range from Hannah Cowdin, who ran the first tavern/meeting at the end of the 18th century, to Sarah Burbank, benefactor of Fitchburg's first training hospital in the late 19th century.
Eleanor Norcross is both sui generis and the inheritor of a grand tradition of strong women. Yet, she had to leave the area in order to devise her legacy, which benefits Fitchburg and surrounding communities to this day: the Fitchburg Art Museum.
Eleanor's father, Amasa Norcross, a rising lawyer, had moved to Fitchburg from Rindge, New Hampshire when he was a youth, and was educated at Fitchburg Academy, the elite "secondary school" of the day. He married Susan Wallis of Fitchburg, who'd run a one-room schoolroom in Rockville, an area in the western part of the town. Eleanor was born in a house on Main Street (since demolished, though the lot was transformed into Monument Park, a memorial to the Civil War dead, in 1872), but spent much of her childhood in a brick row house on upper Main Street, Fitchburg. This house still stands, and it's just a few doors down from the Unitarian Church and the Calvinistic Congregational Church, which her parents attended. One of her earliest friends, Frances Vose Emerson, also spent time in Fitchburg (her father was a local minister). The two girls were educated in the schools together, and later attended Fitchburg Academy. When Eleanor was 11, her younger brother Nelson died, and three years after that, in 1869, her mother died.
Eleanor did well at school, however, graduating second in her class at Fitchburg Academy (Fannie was third), and then both girls lived at Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts, where they attended for two years. After graduating, Eleanor returned home to Fitchburg, and spent the next two years commuting to Mass Normal Art School to train to be an art teacher. She earned two certificates, and taught in the Fitchburg schools for a year. Then, her father was elected to Congress, and she travelled to Washington with him to act as his "hostess." While she was in Washington, she decided she wanted to be a more serious artist, and travelled to New York City, to study with William Merritt Chase, one of the leading art teachers, at the Art Students League. After a few years, he suggested she move to Paris and study with Alfred Stevens. In 1883, she moved to Europe, never to return (at least for long), to Fitchburg. She painted, and exhibited at the Champs de Mars. She was acquainted with Mary Cassatt and probably traded art work with her, as two prints from Cassatt are in the Museum's collection. In the 1890s, she began purchasing art objects with the intention of sending them to America. Wheaton, Worcester Art Museum, and Fitchburg Library were all the beneficiaries of her imaginative purchases, which ranged from Japanese prints, to majolica, to textiles, to illuminated manuscripts.
Sometime in the early part of the 20th century, she decided that Fitchburg needed its own cultural center, one that would provide exhibitions as well as art lessons. She shipped dozens of barrels of materials home for this purpose, and left $10,000 in her will, when she died in 1923, to found an art center provided the town raise an equal amount to provide a healthy endowment. One of her two executors was Frances Vose Emerson.
Eleanor Norcross (1854–1923) was an exceptional woman artist in the 19th century. The majority of her life had been spent living and painting in Paris, but her heart was always in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. She left her work and her fortune to found an art museum and teaching center in her beloved hometown of Fitchburg. When she died of cancer, at Pearl Hill, Fitchburg, the Norcross summer house, she'd already shipped back numerous barrels and trunks of priceless decorative arts, the future inventory of her museum d'espagne. How did a girl raised in one of the Commonwealth's model industrial cities in the 19th century take such an interest in art and culture, so much so that she wanted her fellow townsfolk to benefit from her collection—not just during her lifetime, but in perpetuity?
Eleanor Norcross (or "Ella" as she was for most of her early life), had some distinct advantages that contributed towards the course her life took. First, she was extremely bright and a child of the upper middle class. Her material privileges included the kind of education only available to those on the top of the social pyramid. The second is rather sad: at the age of 14, she lost her mother Susan. This can be seen as an advantage only if you take the view that lacking a female parent meant the absence of an influence to steer her into conventional female paths: marriage and motherhood. Third, she was educated in the last quarter of the last century, a period when women's education was just beginning to take off. Finally, one of her lifelong friends, Frances Vose Emerson, sprang from one of New England's leading educational families, so an example of service and patronage was provided very close to home.
How did a girl from a mill city in the middle of New England decide to become a painter and later found a museum? What circumstances factored in every step she took, and how did these ideas emerge? Thousands of girls grew up without a mother, thousands of girls received higher education. Yet Eleanor kept being part of ever smaller groups—she was one of 27 students at Mass. Normal Art School when she first began attending, and just one of two art teachers in Fitchburg when she began working in the schools. There is no evidence that she made any close male or female friends in Washington, and when she moved to New York City, she would have been one of a dozen or so students in the studio of William Merritt Chase. Very little personal writing survives, and virtually all the text that she wrote after age 30 have to do with the objects she was shipping back home to Fitchburg. However, the roots for all her interests can be seen in some essays she wrote between the ages of 17 and 18 for the magazine at Wheaton. The person who is confident and imaginative, and already thinking about a "castle d'espagne."
Fitchburg played a crucial part in the formation of Eleanor's social conscience and interest in cultural education. Originally inhabited by Nashways, this rolling, glaciated terrain is split by the Nashua River, which provided salmon and transportation route to the indigenous peoples and later a source of power for the mill owners and industrialists. Europeans settled in the area in the early 18th century, and the town separated itself from the neighboring community, Lunenburg, before the Revolutionary War. The first paper mills arrived in the early 19th century, and growth was continuous from that point forward.
Eleanor Norcross was fortunate to be born and raised during a particularly interesting period in the town's history, a period when transition was particularly swift and dramatic. She was fortunate, too, to have been the surviving child of a mother who set an example of executive ability and organizational skills during the Civil War, and a father known both as a canny litigator and the new city's (incorporation came in 1873) first mayor, and later state representative.
In New England, strong community-minded, even altruistic women have been an integral part of the landscape since the days of Anne Hutchinson. Fitchburg produced a number of "fabulous females" (in the words of former Fitchburg Historical Society director Miss Eleanora West). These range from Hannah Cowdin, who ran the first tavern/meeting at the end of the 18th century, to Sarah Burbank, benefactor of Fitchburg's first training hospital in the late 19th century.
Eleanor Norcross is both sui generis and the inheritor of a grand tradition of strong women. Yet, she had to leave the area in order to devise her legacy, which benefits Fitchburg and surrounding communities to this day: the Fitchburg Art Museum.
Eleanor's father, Amasa Norcross, a rising lawyer, had moved to Fitchburg from Rindge, New Hampshire when he was a youth, and was educated at Fitchburg Academy, the elite "secondary school" of the day. He married Susan Wallis of Fitchburg, who'd run a one-room schoolroom in Rockville, an area in the western part of the town. Eleanor was born in a house on Main Street (since demolished, though the lot was transformed into Monument Park, a memorial to the Civil War dead, in 1872), but spent much of her childhood in a brick row house on upper Main Street, Fitchburg. This house still stands, and it's just a few doors down from the Unitarian Church and the Calvinistic Congregational Church, which her parents attended. One of her earliest friends, Frances Vose Emerson, also spent time in Fitchburg (her father was a local minister). The two girls were educated in the schools together, and later attended Fitchburg Academy. When Eleanor was 11, her younger brother Nelson died, and three years after that, in 1869, her mother died.
Eleanor did well at school, however, graduating second in her class at Fitchburg Academy (Fannie was third), and then both girls lived at Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts, where they attended for two years. After graduating, Eleanor returned home to Fitchburg, and spent the next two years commuting to Mass Normal Art School to train to be an art teacher. She earned two certificates, and taught in the Fitchburg schools for a year. Then, her father was elected to Congress, and she travelled to Washington with him to act as his "hostess." While she was in Washington, she decided she wanted to be a more serious artist, and travelled to New York City, to study with William Merritt Chase, one of the leading art teachers, at the Art Students League. After a few years, he suggested she move to Paris and study with Alfred Stevens. In 1883, she moved to Europe, never to return (at least for long), to Fitchburg. She painted, and exhibited at the Champs de Mars. She was acquainted with Mary Cassatt and probably traded art work with her, as two prints from Cassatt are in the Museum's collection. In the 1890s, she began purchasing art objects with the intention of sending them to America. Wheaton, Worcester Art Museum, and Fitchburg Library were all the beneficiaries of her imaginative purchases, which ranged from Japanese prints, to majolica, to textiles, to illuminated manuscripts.
Sometime in the early part of the 20th century, she decided that Fitchburg needed its own cultural center, one that would provide exhibitions as well as art lessons. She shipped dozens of barrels of materials home for this purpose, and left $10,000 in her will, when she died in 1923, to found an art center provided the town raise an equal amount to provide a healthy endowment. One of her two executors was Frances Vose Emerson.
External links
- -Jstor Info (jstor.com)
- Academian Cassatt (Cassatt).
- http://members.cox.net/academia2/cassatt6d.html - Cassatt.