Ellen Emmet Rand, born 4 March 1875, was a painter and illustrator. She specialised in portraits, painting over 500 works during her career including portraits of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
Ellen was the third of six children born to Ellen James Temple Emmet and Christopher Temple Emmet. She was nicknamed "Bay". Ellen was born in San Francisco but moved to New York after her father's death in 1884. Her cousins were painters Lydia Field Emmet, Rosina Emmet Sherwood, and Jane Emmet de Glehn and the writers Henry James and William James.
Rand studied with Dennis Miller Bunker and attended the Cowles Art School in Boston and then from 1889 to 1893 registered for classes at the Art Students League of New York. Rand then attended the William Merritt Chase's Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art.
Harry McVickar, editor of Vogue magazine, saw her work in an exhibit for the summer school and asked her to illustrate for the magazine. She also illustrated for Harper's Weekly and Harper's Bazaar. In 1896 Rand travelled to England. She returned to the US in 1898 and then to Paris to study with Frederick William MacMonnies. Also in France and studying with MacMonnies was fellow American artist Mary Foote. Rand returned to New York City in 1900 and began her painting career in earnest.
Rand focused her energy and output on painting portraits of corporate directors, society women, politicians, scientists, professors, lawyers and artists in the United States. Her portraits of the singer Susan Metcalfe Casals and her husband cellist Pablo Casals, opera singer Charles Gilibert, as well as her portraits of sculptor Saint-Gaudens and MacMonnies, all attest to her engagement with the arts in the first decade of the twentieth century. She was honoured for her Portrait of the Hon. Donald T. Warner at PAFA's 1922 annual exhibition.
In terms of politicians she claimed to have started a work on a portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt but she had to give it up. "It was ridiculous," she recalled. "He couldn't sit still—especially with children going in and out of the studio with snakes and spiders." Rand did, however, complete three portraits of President Franklin Roosevelt, including his official presidential portrait. She was the second female artist commissioned to produce a presidential portrait. After his death, the portrait was moved to the Roosevelt estate and future FDR Library in Hyde Park, NY. In 2004 the portrait was reported missing from the Library. Rand also painted three U.S. Secretaries of State—John Milton Hay, Elihu Root, and Henry Lewis Stimson.
She married William Blanchard Rand in 1911 and had three sons. Rand's primary studio was in New York City but she would also work in Salisbury, Connecticut where her family lived. Ellen Emmet Rand died 18 December 1941, aged 66, in New York. Rand was the first woman awarded a Beck Gold Medal by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
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