Frances W. Delehanty
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Frances Washington Delehanty (January 31, 1879 — January 8, 1977) was an American artist and illustrator, and a noted designer of bookplates, posters, and toy theatres. Later in life she helped to establish the Abbey of Regina Laudis on her property in Connecticut.
Early life and education
[edit]Frances Washington Delehanty was born in Washington, D.C.[1] and raised in New York, the daughter of Daniel Delehanty and Fanny Madison Washington Delehanty. Her father was a Naval officer. She was descended from George Washington's brother Samuel Washington,[2] through her maternal grandfather, editor Benjamin Franklin Washington.[3] Delehanty attended the Academy of the Visitation, a Roman Catholic girls' school in Brooklyn, New York.[4]
As a young woman she traveled in Europe with photographer Gertrude Käsebier and her daughter Hermine.[5] Delehanty is featured in one of Käsebier's better known photographs, titled "The Manger" (1899).[6]
She also studied art at Pratt Institute. In 1915, Vanity Fair called her "the Queen of the Benedict Art-Village and absolute ruler of the Dutch Oven outdoor cafe", in an illustrated story about artists in Washington Square Park.[7] During World War I she used her French skills as a nurse in France. [1]
Career in art
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Delehanty's illustrations appeared in national magazines including Everybody's Magazine[8] Bookman magazine,[9] and Harper's Weekly. She illustrated the books The Works of Jesus (1909) by Edna S. Little, Love in a Dutch Garden (1914) by Neith Boyce, More Fairytale Plays (1917) by Marguerite Merington, Gertrude Crownfield's Heralds of the King (1931), and Justine Ward's Sunday Mass (1932).[10] She wrote and illustrated Canticle of the Three Children in the Fiery Furnace (1936), and They Go to Mass (1938).
Delehanty was a prolific designer of bookplates.[11][12] She designed posters for actress Minnie Maddern Fiske.[13] She also made miniature cardboard "fairy playhouses" or toy theaters for children. "There is individuality abundantly manifest in all this remarkable girl does," marveled one newspaper profile in 1913.[14]
Delehanty showed four portraits at the annual art exhibition in Stockbridge, Massachusetts in 1922.[15] She also had a group of "fashionable" portraits on exhibit in New York, and at the Gillespie Gallery in Pittsburgh, in 1927.[16]
Abbey founding
[edit]Frances W. "Fanny" Delehanty lived in Bethlehem, Connecticut with fellow artist Lauren Ford (1891-1973), next door to Ford's adopted daughter, Dora Stone. In 1947, the pair helped to establish the Abbey of Regina Laudis near their farm in Connecticut.[17][18] It was the first American monastery for cloistered Benedictine nuns. The founding of the abbey was the inspiration for a film, Come to the Stable (1949), written by Clare Booth Luce and starring Loretta Young and Celeste Holm; Elsa Lanchester played the eccentric, artistic, religious landowner character "Amelia Potts" (taking the place of both Ford and Delehanty).[19]
Death
[edit]Delehanty died at home in Connecticut after a long illness in 1977, at age 97.[1][20][21]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c "Fanny Delehanty Abbey Founder, Succumbs" Naugatuck Daily News (January 14, 1977): 2. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Thornton Augustin Washington, A Genealogical History, Beginning with Colonel John Washington, the Emigrant (Press of McGill & Wallace, 1891): 60-61.
- ^ "Mrs. Daniel Delehanty" New York Times (June 5, 1930): 19. via ProQuest
- ^ "High Honors Attained By the Pupils of the Visitation Academy" Brooklyn Daily Eagle (June 20, 1894): 7. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Untitled brief social item, Brooklyn Daily Eagle (August 18, 1901): 14. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Gertrude Käsebier, "The Manger" (1899), National Museum of Women in the Arts.
- ^ D. and H. Ferriss, "Vie de Bohême in Washington Square" Vanity Fair (August 1915): 36.
- ^ J. P. Mowbray, "The Making of a Country Home" Everybody's Magazine (July 1901): 65.
- ^ "Bookplates at Writers' Bureau" Honolulu Star-Bulletin (April 12, 1924): 20. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Justine Ward, Sunday Mass (Lecouvet 1932).
- ^ Nancy Beyer, "Book Plates" Industrial-Arts Magazine (February 1915): 79-82.
- ^ "Notes of the Month" Ex Libris Journal (April 1904): 53.
- ^ "Rare Art Treasures" The New York Dramatic Mirror (May 21, 1910): 7.
- ^ Janet Vale, "The Maker of Littlest Theaters" The Buffalo Sunday Morning News (February 16, 1913): 15. via Newspapers.com
- ^ "Berkshire Artists Exhibit Summer Work at Stockbridge" New York Herald (August 27, 1922): 36. via Newspapers.com
- ^ "Frances Delehanty's Portrait Drawings" Pittsburgh Daily Post (March 20, 1927): 58. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Antoinette Bosco, Mother Benedict: Foundress of the Abbey of Regina Laudis (Ignatius Press 2009): 179-180, 189-190. ISBN 9781586174118
- ^ James F. Looby, "Seven Nuns are Enclosed by Bishop" Hartford Courant (September 3, 1948): 1, 7. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Margalit Fox, "Mother Benedict Dies at 94; Head of a Cloistered Abbey" New York Times (October 10, 2005): B8.
- ^ "Miss Delehanty Rites Saturday" Bridgeport Post (January 14, 1977): 32. via Newspapers.com
- ^ "Descendant of Family of Washington Dies" Hartford Courant (January 14, 1977): 5. via Newspapers.com
External links
[edit]- Frances W. Delehanty at Find a Grave
- Lew Jaffe, "Frances W. Delehanty" Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie (November 15, 2013). Blog post about Delehanty's bookplates, with many examples.
- An ex libris bookplate for Kate Cameron Simmons, by Frances W. Delehanty, in the Maria Gerard Messenger Collection of Women's Bookplates, at The Grolier Club.