Mary Foote

Mary Foote (1872–1968) was an American painter and producer of notes of Carl Jung's seminars. As an artist, she lived and worked in New York's Washington Square, Paris and Peking. From 1928 to the 1950s she lived in Zurich and created and published notes of Carl Jung's seminars until World War II. She returned to the United States in the 1950s and spent her later years in Connecticut, where she died.

For the American writer and illustrator, see Mary Hallock Foote.
Mary Foote
Born(1872-11-25)November 25, 1872
DiedJanuary 28, 1968(1968-01-28) (aged 95)
Guilford, Connecticut
Resting placeFoote-Ward Cemetery, Guilford, Connecticut
41°18′31.9″N 72°40′17.1″W
NationalityAmerican
EducationYale School of Art
AwardsAlice Kimball English prize, William Wirt Winchester prize
Mary Foote, Portrait of Mrs. Wilfred Worcester, oil on canvas, 50.5 x 30 inches, c. 1898-1901
Mary Foote, Lady in Lavender, oil on canvas, 30 x 16 inches, c.1898-01
Mary Foote, Oriental Girl with Doll, oil on canvas, 21.5 x 13.25 inches, c. 1898-01
Mary Foote, Old Lady, 1913 Armory Show
Mary Foote, Portrait of Hiram Bingham III, 1921

Early life

Mary Foote was the daughter of Charles Spencer Foote (1837-1880) and Hannah Hubbard Foote (1840-1885).[1][2] She was born in Guilford, Connecticut, as was her younger sister, Margaret Foote Hawley, who also became an artist[3] and painted a profile portrait of a girl named Mary Foote.[4][5] After the girls were orphaned, Margaret was raised by her aunt, Harriet Foote Hawley and her husband in Washington, D.C.[3] Mary was taken in by an aunt who lived in Hartford, Connecticut after she became an orphan at the age of 13.[6]

Her cousin was Lilly Gillette Foote, who was governess to Mark Twain's children.[6] For a period of time Mary Foote lived in the Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) household and was friends with Susy Clemens.[7][8]

Mary Foote was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the great-great-granddaughter of General Andrew Ward (1727-1799) and Diana Hubbard Ward. Ward, who was born and died in Guilford, Connecticut, was commended for his bravery by George Washington. Foote's grandparents were George Augustus Foote and Eliza Spencer and her great-grandparents were Eli Foote and Diana Ward.[9]

Career

Art

Beginning in 1890, she studied art at Yale School of Art.[6][10] In 1894, the Alice Kimball English Prize, which was established to support summer travel, was awarded to Foote. The William Wirt Winchester Prize, which funded two years of study in Europe, was awarded to Foote in 1897; It was considered the "largest prize of its kind" in the United States at that time.[11] Foote travelled to Paris, France and studied with John Singer Sargent.[10] She was a student of Frederick MacMonnies at the Académie Carmen in Paris and at Giverny; the gardens there became the subject of many of her paintings.[12] She also made a portrait painting of MacMonnies.[13] Her friends included art patron Mabel Dodge, dancer Isadora Duncan, author Henry James, writer Gertrude Stein,[14] James McNeil Whistler, Ellen Emmet Rand, and Cecilia Beaux.[7]

In 1901, she returned to New York City to set up a studio on Washington Square where she earned a comfortable living from her portrait commissions;[6] her list of clients reads as a Who's Who of the art scene of her day. Foote painted a wide range of subjects including portraits, figures, florals, and landscapes.[7]

Her work was exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, along with the works of Robert Henri, Cecilia Beaux, Edmund Tarbell and other noted artists.[15] Her work was described as follows:

Mary Foote sent some fine canvases, of which the most striking, perhaps, was that of Mrs. John Carpenter-an exceedingly skilful management of a blue hat and a red coat, with well considered "repeat" accents in the book and cup and saucer upon the table. Her portrait of Mrs. Hermann Kobbe also showed a fine and subtle modeling, and the color value of the pink necklace in relation to the peculiar flesh tints of the subject was happily expressed.[15]

At the Armory Show in 1913, she exhibited Old Lady.

Foote lived and worked in Peking, China from December 1926 into early 1927.[14][16]

During the 1920s, she shared her studio and had a relationship with Frederick MacMonnies, and went into a deep depression after it ended.[17] She sought treatment from Smith Ely Jelliffe, and in 1927 closed down her studio.[17] One of her friends, Robert Edmond Jones, a stage designer in New York, had been a patient of Carl Jung and Toni Wolff. He advised Foote, who has been described as neurotic, to seek the treatment of Jung in Zurich, Switzerland.[14]

Carl Jung

After closing her studio, Foote went to Zurich to see Swiss psychotherapist Carl Jung. Beginning in 1928, she worked for Jung, first transcribing his seminars and editing Jung's English phrasing, and then producing the bound copies for their participants.[17] For instance, her notes became the basis for The Visions Seminars, which was published in 1976.[10] Her secretary and assistant from the 1930s until the seminar series ended with World War II was an Englishwoman, Mrs. Emily Köppel, who was married to a man from Switzerland. The work was paid for by subscriptions, and supplemented initially by Mary Foote and later by Mary and Paul Mellon and Alice Lewisohn Crowley.[18]

In the 1930s, Foote had a secret liaison with Harvard-educated German businessman Ernst Hanfstaengl. She returned to Connecticut shortly before her death; her obituary listed her as having been Jung's "secretary."[17]

She was among the social circle of Mabel Dodge Luhan and visited her at her Villa Curonia.[10] A fellow friend, Muriel Draper, said of Foote:

I cannot conceive of more conflicting psychological elements meeting under similar conditions without explosion. Almost everyone was in love or hate and only Mary Foote could come cutting through the snarled air like a cool smooth silver fruit-knife, severing at the crucial moments the crossed threads that were in danger of becoming firmly knotted entanglements.[10]

She was also described as a tall, elegant woman.[14] Mary Mellon, wife of Paul Mellon, said of her, "She has great style. From her you will learn about the feeling relationships among people there. She is very frail and I'm afraid not very well. Take her to dinner at the Beaur-au-Lac and feed on her champagne and caviar."[19]

Later years and death

In the 1950s Foote returned to Connecticut.[20] She died among friends on January 28, 1968 and is buried in the Foote-Ward Cemetery in Guilford, Connecticut.[2][20] Her papers are with the Yale University Library.[20]

Works
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References
  1. Daughters of the American Revolution. Lineage Book - National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Daughters of the American Revolution; 1904. p. 331.
  2. Mary Foote. Foote-Ward Cemetery, Guilford, Connecticut. Find a Grave. Retrieved May 2, 2014.
  3. Jules Heller; Nancy G. Heller. North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary. Taylor & Francis; 19 December 2013. ISBN 978-1-135-63889-4. p. 1862.
  4. Art World. Kalon Publishing Company; 1917. p. 402.
  5. Philadelphia Water Color Club. Catalogue of the ... Philadelphia Water Color Exhibition. 1918. p. 8, 14.
  6. Joan MacPhail Knight. Charlotte in Giverny. Chronicle Books; 4 January 2013. ISBN 978-1-4521-2565-7. p. 81.
  7. Mary Foote. John Pence Gallery. Retrieved May 4, 2014.
  8. Frank Abate. Connecticut Trivia. Thomas Nelson Inc; 1 September 2001. ISBN 978-1-4185-7151-1. p. PT36.
  9. Daughters of the American Revolution. Lineage Book - National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Daughters of the American Revolution; 1904. pp. 331–332.
  10. Mary Foote. Intimate Circles: American Women in the Arts. Yale Library. Retrieved May 2, 2014.
  11. Betsy Fahlman. John Ferguson Weir: The Labor of Art. University of Delaware Press; 1 January 1997. ISBN 978-0-87413-602-9. p. 139.
  12. Joan MacPhail Knight. Charlotte in Giverny. Chronicle Books; 4 January 2013. ISBN 978-1-4521-2565-7. p. PT 81.
  13. Book News: An Illustrated Magazine of Literature and Books .... J. Wanamaker.; 1905. p. 710.
  14. William McGuire. Bollingen: An Adventure in Collecting the Past. Princeton University Press; 1989. ISBN 0-691-01885-5. p. 16.
  15. Gustav Stickley. The Craftsman. United Crafts; 1911. p. 110.
  16. The Yale University Library Gazette. Yale University Library; 1974. p. 229.
  17. Bair, Deirdre (2004). Jung: A Biography. Little, Brown & Company. pp. 360–63. ISBN 0-316-15938-7.
  18. C.G. Jung. Dream Analysis 1: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-30. Routledge; 28 October 2013. ISBN 978-1-134-72198-6. p. xi–xii.
  19. William McGuire. Bollingen: An Adventure in Collecting the Past. Princeton University Press; 1989. ISBN 0-691-01885-5. p. 111–112.
  20. C.G. Jung. Dream Analysis 1: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-30. Routledge; 28 October 2013. ISBN 978-1-134-72198-6. p. xi.
  21. Search: Mary Foote. SIRIS. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved May 5, 2014.
  22. Charles Holme; Guy Eglinton; Peyton Boswell. International Studio. New York Offices of the International Studio; 1918. p. lxxxii.
  • Mary Foote, American Women in the Arts, Yale University (includes photographs of Mary Foote)
  • Mary Foote Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
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