Looking for Eulabee Dix

It was not unusual for young women of the late Victorian era to take to art with a passion and flamboyance that brought them either fame or notoriety, and sometimes both. One such artist was Eulabee Dix (1878-1961), a leading miniaturist of the American revival period at the turn of the century. A fascinating and determined woman, Eulabee painted "in little" but was larger than life. The artist's memoirs, her family's recollections, and letters to her from John Butler Yeats, energize and balance this biography of a woman whose blazing talent was joined to a personality that sometimes defied understanding. She painted the last portrait of Mark Twain from life, as well as miniatures of Ethel Barrymore, the Countess of Warwick and her titled friends, and Hollywood and New York luminaries of social, artistic, and literary prominence. Eulabee's exquisite color sense and brushwork are seen today in the collection of her work at The National Museum of Women in the Arts, and in miniature collections at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Worcester Art Museum. A great beauty herself, Eulabee was painted by other artists, including her friends Robert Henri, John Sloan, and Charles Hawthorne, and she was photographed by Gertrude Kasebier. These acclaimed works and her own beautiful miniatures illustrate the life of a woman dedicated to preserving an art form that had endured since the Middle Ages.