Margery Ryerson

Margery Austen Ryerson was an American artist, painter, etcher, lithographer and watercolorist. Her work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Ryerson earned her Bachelor's of Fine Arts in English from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, after attending private schools in Morristown. She went on to study under Charles Hawthorne at the Cape Cod School of Art in Province, Massachusetts, and with Robert Henri at the Art Students League in New York.

During the years 1920 through 1940 Ryerson taught in New York settlement houses. There she got the privilege to paint and draw the children in their care. The subjects of these paintings were often the children of the underclass and immigrants. Her artistic technique and subjects gained universal recognition and appealed to many people. Miss Ryerson is most known for her portraits, child genre paintings and etches.

Her art frequently shows children or people doing common everyday activities, such as reading, knitting, playing with toys and sleeping. A key element of Ryerson's art that sets her apart from similar artists, is that she tends to portray the children in paintings alone, without the presence of a maternal figure.

Margery Ryerson chose to depict children independently in pictures, partly from Robert Henri's teachings that kids could be the subjects of paintings just as much as adults could. However, it is also because of the environment/ location that she painted in at the beginning of her career. At first she was not involved with families who could afford to pay for a portrait. So that's when she became exposed to the less privileged children. Then later she sought out independent, self-reliant children.

Ryerson has also painted landscapes, city scapes, nudes, and still-life.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023