Anna Richards Brewster (1870-1952)

About the Artist

Anna Mary Richards Brewster was the precocious daughter of seascapist William Trost Richards. At the age of fourteen she exhibited at the National Academy of Design. She studied at the Cowles School of Art in Boston, Art Students League in New York, in Paris at the Académie Julian, and with John Lafarge and William Merritt Chase. She also lived in London between 1896 and 1905 and studied independently in the ateliers of her father and mother, Anna Matlock Richards. She was a sensitive individual who illustrated a book by her mother, titled, Letter and Spirit: Dramatic Sonnets of Inward Life.

Anna was a member of the National Association of Women Artists, Scarsdale Art Association, Scarsdale Women’s Club, and American Watercolor Society. She exhibited at the National Academy (1884-1932; prize, 1890), London’s Royal Academy, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Salons of America. Today her work is in the collections of the Butler Institute of American Art, New Britain Museum of Art, Lyman Allyn Museum of Art, Georgia Museum of Art, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University, Stanford University and Barnard College.