MARY CLARE SHERWOOD
(American, 1868-1943)

Mary Clare Sherwood was an Impressionist painter from Vicksburg, MS.  As the head of the art department at All Saints College, she taught several generations of Mississippi artists, including Andrew Bucci and Alberta Collier.  Sherwood studied at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Arts Students’ League in New York under William Merritt Chase, Julien Alden Weir and others, and in Berlin, Germany and Brittany, France.

Originally from NY, she came to Vicksburg, MS in 1920.  Sherwood’s work was widely exhibited and in 1931 and 1934, her landscapes won gold ribbons from the Mississippi Art Association.  In 1936, she won the purchase prize.  She was an exhibiting member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors and the Southern States Art League.  Her work is in the collection of the Mississippi Museum of Art.

Rural Mississippi, 1938,

oil on board, signed and dated “’38” lower left, 23 ½ x 25 in. 
In a period Arts & Crafts style giltwood frame.

In this bright, vibrant landscape, billowing clouds and colorful trees fill the sky around a small cottage where laundry dries on the line.  An African-American woman in a white apron walks on a dirt road away from the quaint home.  The lush Impressionist brush work calls to mind the work of fellow Mississippi artist Kate Freeman Clark, who also studied under William Merritt Chase at the Art Students’ League.