Musée No:792.029
Regular price £25.00Woman In Grey
Artist: Abraham Archibald Anderson
Date:1874
Abraham Archibald Anderson (1846 – 1940) was an American artist, rancher and philanthropist. After an initial career as a businessman, he married Elizabeth Milbank in 1786. A fascinating woman she was the reform-minded daughter of the investor Jeremiah Milbank and an heiress to his considerable fortune. In 1905 she established one of the first foundations funded by a woman and in her lifetime supported a wide range of health and social reform efforts, from tuberculosis and diphtheria eradication to relief work for European children following World War I.
Anderson studied art in Paris, beginning in the mid-1870s, with amongst others Léon Bonnat and Auguste Rodin. He developed a reputation for his portraits and his 1889 portrait of Thomas Alva Edison, America's greatest inventor, is in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. In 1890, Anderson organized the American Art Association in Paris, a beneficial mutual-aid society for American art students, he was president until 1912.
In 1900, Anderson commissioned the 10-story Bryant Park Studios building in New York, its generous windows and high-ceilings were designed specifically for artists. Anderson maintained his own suite on the top floor until the end of his life. Bryant Park Studios (popularly known as The Beaux Arts Building) became immediately popular. Anderson bought land in north-western Wyoming and developed it into the Palette Ranch. He personally designed William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's guest ranch Pahaska Tepee, and his own home, Anderson Lodge. That lodge became the first administrative headquarters for the Yellowstone Forest Reserve in 1902, when President Theodore Roosevelt named Anderson as the first Special Superintendent of Forest Reserves. He played a significant role in the preservation and development of Yellowstone.
The sitter is unknown.
