Isabelle Sprague Smith

Isabelle Sprague Smith, also Isabelle Dwight Sprague Smith (November 11, 1861 – December 28, 1950) was an American artist, teacher, and school principal until the mid-1920s. Her students donated the Isabelle D. Sprague Smith Studio to the MacDowell Colony, where she was a member, by 1918. She was director of the People's Institute of New York. Sprague Smith was president of the Bach Festival in New York, and the founder of the Bach Festival in Winter Park, Florida in 1935.

Isabelle Dwight Sprague Smith, 1939, recipient of honorary degree, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida

Personal life and education

Isabelle Dwight was born on November 11, 1861 in Clinton, New York, the daughter of Benjamin W. Dwight and Wealthy J. Dewey Dwight.[1] Her uncle was Theodore William Dwight, the head of Columbia Law School, and her great-grandfather was Timothy Dwight IV, was the president of Yale University[2] and before that was chaplain of General Samuel Holden Parsons's brigade during the Revolutionary War.[3] She attended Dwight School in Clinton, in which her father was the founder and principal,[2] and then studied art at the Art Students League of New York and in Paris.[1]

She married Charles Sprague Smith, a Columbia University professor and a social progressive, on November 11, 1884 in Clinton, New York. They had a daughter, Hilda,[1] on September 18, 1885,[4] and lived at 29 W. 68th Street in Manhattan beginning by 1903.[5][6] The Sprague Smiths were on the New York Social Register.[7] Charles was seriously ill with pneumonia[8] and died on March 29[1] or 30 in 1910.[9]

Hilda Sprague Smith, by January 1910, passport photograph

Hilda attended Velton School for Girls.[10] She studied politics, history and economics and graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1909.[11][lower-alpha 1] On November 1, 1915, she married Victor Starzenski, the son of Polish Count Maurice and Countess Anna Starzenski.[6][lower-alpha 2] where he worked at General Electric as an engineer.[10] She was back to Hilda Sprague Smith in 1929.[lower-alpha 3]

In 1935, Sprague Smith had a Spanish-style house built for her in Winter Park, Florida that was designed by James Gamble Rogers II.[14] Hilda died in 1942.[11] Isabelle established the Hilda Sprague-Smith Fund for the purchase of books about history at the Bryn Mawr College Library in her memory.[15] After a brief illness, Sprague Smith died on December 28, 1950.[16][17]

Career

New York

Sprague Smith was an art teacher, and the principal of Veltin School for Girls from 1900.[1] to 1925.[11]

She worked as an artist, and had a Carnegie Hall studio by 1903.[5] Sprague Smith was a director of the MacDowell Club[1] and by 1903 was a member of the Woman's Art Club of New York.[5] She was director of Arden Studios at 160 W. 74th Street (the same location as Veltin School) by 1915.[18] She was a member of the MacDowell Colony[1] and by 1918, 31 of Sprague Smith's students funded the creation of the Isabelle D. Sprague Smith studio at the MacDowell Colony, an artist colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.[19]

She helped found[2] and was director of the People’s Institute,[1] which was founded by her husband. He was its director until his death in 1910.[20][9]

Sprague Smith was a member of the Cosmopolitan Club, a private social club for women, and the Barnard Club.[1] She was president of the New York Bach Festival.[21]

Florida

She founded the Bach Festival in Winter Park, Florida in 1935.[11][22] Through "sheer force of will, [she] created the choir, soloists, musicians, audience and funds necessary for the project."[23] The annual concert has been held the months of February and March at the Knowles Memorial Chapel at Rollins College[24] and beginning in the late 1940s was broadcast over a national broadcasting station.[2]

She received an honorary degree from Rollins College in 1939.[25] She managed the festivals activities until 1950. It is Central Florida's oldest operating performing arts organization and the third-oldest continuously operating Bach Festival in the United States.[22]

Notes

1. Isabelle and Hilda traveled throughout Europe following the 1909 graduation.[10] Hilda documented her travels to Europe and other family events in 31 scrapbooks and journals that were donated to Berea College in 1942, the year she died.[11]
2. She also married him by contract in 1916, because she desired a method where she was not "given away" in marriage.[10] They lived in Schenectady, New York,[6][12]
3. Hilda Sprague Smith resided at the family house on W. 68th Street by 1929, when she traveled to Europe with Isabelle and Louise Veltin.[13]

References

1. John W. Leonard (1914). "Isabelle Dwight Sprague-Smith". Woman's Who's who of America: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Women of the United States and Canada, 1914-1915. American Commonwealth Company. pp. 771–772. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
2. "Isabelle Sprague-Smith dies at the age of 89". The Baltimore Sun. December 29, 1950. p. 4. Retrieved February 3, 2017 – via newspapers.com.
3. "Lineage book, National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution". Daughters of the American Revolution. 1916. p. 84. Retrieved February 3, 2017 – via archive.org.
4. "Hilda Sprague Smith, Passport Application", NARA Series: Passport Applications, January 2, 1906 - March 31, 1925, Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), January 19, 1910
5. American Art Annual. MacMillan Company. 1903. p. 373.
6. "Miss Sprague Smith Weds Contess's Son". The New York TImes. November 2, 1915. p. 11. Retrieved February 3, 2017 – via newspapers.com.
7. Social Register: New York. Social Register Association. 1943. p. 714.
8. "Charles Sprague Smith III" (PDF). The New York Times. March 28, 2017. Retrieved February 2, 2017.
9. Edward Thomas Devine; Paul Underwood Kellogg (1910). The Survey. Survey Associates. p. 80. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
10. "Wedded by Contract". The Washington Post. February 28, 1916. p. 5. Retrieved February 3, 2017 – via newspapers.com.
11. "Sprague-Smith Collection, 1904-1938". Berea College Special Collections and Archives. Berea, Kentucky. March 2014. Retrieved February 3, 2017.
12. Social Register, New York. Social Register Association. 1920. p. 663.
13. Ile de France Passenger List, Departing Le Havre France and Arriving in New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 database, June 12, 1929, pp. 8–9
14. Sarah Wilson (April 4, 2013). "Tour of Winter Park's architectural history". Winter Park Observer. Retrieved February 3, 2017.
15. "Endowed Funds". Bryn Mawr College Library. Retrieved February 3, 2017.
16. "Mrs. I.D. Smith". The Courier-News. Bridgewater, New Jersey. December 29, 1950. p. 20. Retrieved February 3, 2017.
17. "Founder of a Fete to Honor Bach Died" (PDF). The New York Times. December 29, 1950. p. 20. Retrieved February 3, 2017.
18. Directory of Directors in the City of New York. Audit Company. 1915. p. 653.
19. "Studios". The Musical Monitor. Mrs. David Allen Campbell, Publisher. 1918. p. 357.
20. Fronc, Jennifer (December 2009). New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era (First ed.). University of Chicago Press. p. 123. ISBN 9780226266091.
21. Dominique H. Vasseur (2007). Edna Boies Hopkins: Strong in Character, Colorful in Expression. Ohio University Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-8214-1769-0.
22. "History". Bach Festival Society of Winter Park, Florida. Retrieved February 3, 2017.
23. "35 Years of Bach Festivals". The Orlando Sentinel. March 30, 1970. Retrieved February 3, 2017 – via newspapers.com.
24. "Bach Festivals and Cantata Series Bach Festival of Winter Park". Bach Cantatas. Retrieved February 3, 2017.
25. Jay Hamburg (February 6, 2015). "Bach Festival Turns 80: The Woman that Launched a Thousand Performances". Rollins College. Retrieved February 3, 2017.