Among those who stood “at the head of Chicago’s women artists” and could “compare with any painter as regards strength and completeness of work” was Alice DeWolf Kellogg Tyler.[1] A critic once said of her “The best painter, man or woman, in Chicago.”[2]

The women of Chicago prior to the ‘great fire of 1871’ achieved little in the field of art. Like women of other cities their time was taken up by their domestic duties and social affairs…But since the ‘great fire’ the women artists of Chicago have come rapidly to the front and have made themselves known and felt in every branch of art. Marie Koupal Lusk, Alice Kellogg Tyler and Caroline D. Wade stand, according to common avowal, at the head of Chicago’s women artists, and in their own particular line they can compare with any painter as regards strength and completeness of work.[3]

Alice’s contribution to the world of art warrants reexamination, not because she was one “of the many women artists of Chicago who [rose] to the topmost rung of the art ladder” and admirably promoted the “general standard of western art,” but because she had “few equals among artists of Chicago” as a portrait painter and “won much honest praise” as a landscapist.[4] “[She] possessed an appreciation of character backed by solid technical training that was surpassed by few of the men. She had, added to her schooling here, the advantages of Paris and undoubtedly would have continued to be one of the leaders in our local art circle.”[5]

Alice exhibited on the basis of her artistic merit, not gender, as exemplified by her works that were hung beside paintings by men at the 1889 Paris Exposition Universalle and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.[6] It was her intent to produce work intelligent work, unlike that of other women artists.[7] She expected to work as hard as any man at her craft, and would exemplify this ethic throughout her career.[8] Her work was described as having a “remarkable union of simple, direct vigor and poetic feeling.”[9] During a career in Chicago, which was cut short at the age of thirty-seven, few artists, male or female, attracted more attention.

Lorado Taft (1860-1936), head of the sculpture department at the School of the Art Institute, referred to her charisma when he recollected an excursion through the Art Palace at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, saying: “She was the soul of the group…. Our progress was constantly impeded by greetings. Everybody seemed to be a particular friend of hers, and no sooner had we rescued her from one group than, to our amused vexation, she would be surrounded by another admiring band. I believe I never knew any one so much beloved by so many kinds of people.”[10] At five feet one inch tall, and size three and a half shoe, the diminutive Alice was a dynamo.

Jane Addams, founder of the settlement organization Hull-House, attributed Alice’s greatness to her “power to share and interpret universal life.” Addams grasped the enriching significance of Alice’s work when she said, “This artist gave us an impression of the openness and at the same time of the mystery of life; of a spirit of adventure and of a spirit of unusual peace; of unending vitality and of repose; of high courage and of sweet humility…”[11]

As a young girl she worried whether she was “to go through life trying and not succeeding.”[12] Success came to her, but “it was like writing one’s name on the beach and the mighty waters come with a roar and every trace of the name is gone leaving the sand as smooth as if no person had with patient care engraved his name upon it.”[13] Internally, the multi-dimensional artist tried to balance, throughout her life, a spiritual appreciation for personal contentment with her ambitious passion for professional recognition. She eventually fell into obscurity while her paintings were locked in trunks for decades, moved from estate to estate, until finally sold in 1981, at Arkansas auction. The time is long overdue to un-box the accomplishments of Alice Kellogg Tyler.

She was born in Chicago on December 27, 1862,[14] the daughter of Dr. John Leonard Kellogg (1811-1893). He was a member of the first faculty of Hahnemann Medical College (founded 1859), which specialized in homeopathic medicine, built a large private medical practice, and was a member of the Unitarian Church.[15] He was also the staff doctor for the Chicago Home for the Friendless, an organization that housed and cared for indigent children.[16] Her mother was Harriet Bencham Scott (1827-1905). Alice was one of six daughters including: Mary Stewart (1852-1942); Kate Starr (1854-1925);[17] Gertrude Elizabeth (1859-1927); Harriet (Peggy) Kellogg Foster (1860-1942), and Mabel Kellogg Rich (1869-1947). After the Chicago Fire of 1871, the Kellogg’s moved to a farm in Washington Heights, which was incorporated into Chicago in 1891.[18] Alice’s parents played critical roles in her upbringing. In her happy family she was never ruled by “iron discipline,” but “free to go or to come to give or withhold, to love or not love” as she “sincerely felt.”[19] She described the stages in her life as “first the happy childhood, then the youth with its widening horizon, new experiences and sad disenchantments, then a rebellion against the evils which tore down our idols, next a resolve…to have all the fun one could since there was so much that was not fun…afterward a feeling that this was not satisfying, it was deadening and distasteful…”[20]

She credited her father as making an impression upon her as a child. From “Papa” she sought confirmation that things “must work out” and correct thinking would “gradually regulate life.” She felt her purpose was to be “a ray to other lives.”[21] From her mother she acquired “influence that filled the home with its hominess and tender attraction.”[22] Always searching “for real satisfaction,” Alice intended to live a good noble life and “keep an inward attitude of joyful patience.”[23]

Besides her parents, Alice’s older sister Kate, a teacher and administrator for the Chicago public schools, greatly influenced her. Over the decades, Kate provided Alice with advice and the encouragement needed to become a successful artist. Kate admitted that “we all try and fail,” but counseled Alice to “put away dreams...else some time you may awaken, and fine your rainbow nothing but cold mist. Read less, exercise more, and above all don’t procrastinate—you know what that means—make up your mind and then act.”[24]

When Alice commenced her art studies in 1879 at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts (predecessor to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago), she had no idea as to her life’s ambition. “It was simply an experiment,” but later, art became “her life’s mission.”[25] Her instructors included well-known Chicago painters Henry Fenton Spread (1844-1890),[26] Lawrence Carmichael Earle (1845-1921), and J. Roy Robertson (born in Scotland-deceased after 1891). At the close of her first academic year, she had received a first prize, for an oil study from life, and a first prize in the 15-minute sketch competition. The second oil study prize went to her close friend, and future travel companion and studio-mate, Ida Cole Haskell (1861-1932).[27] As winter approached, Alice was part of a new society of “young people of Washington Heights” formed to organize social events.[28] She was outgoing, and throughout her career people would mention her magnetic personality and ability to draw people near. At the close of the 1881 school year, Alice had graduated, and her close friend Ida Haskell had garnered the Gold Medal.[29]

For the 1881-1882 school year, Alice as appointed as an assistant teacher.[30] Having only entered the Academy two years earlier, this was remarkable progress. She worked with established instructors Spread, Earle, and Daniel Folger Bigelow (1823-1910).[31] The school had grown to almost two hundred students, and monied Chicagoans such as grain merchant J. H. Dole, came to take an interest in local art. At his mansion, “a perfect home of art,” he entertained the faculty and students of the Academy, including Alice, at the close of the first term.[32] Support from such wealthy individuals would be instrumental in the formation of the Art Institute of Chicago, and outgrowth of the Academy of Design and Academy of Fine Arts.[33] The following school year she became a full instructor, teaching drawing from casts and life models as well as painting from the costumed model, every day except Saturday.[34]

While attending and teaching at the Academy, she developed a camaraderie with other young women studying there. In the fall of 1880, the Bohemian-born Marie Koupal (later Lusk) (1862-1929), invited half a dozen talented women to her studio for a meeting. The ambitious group continued their meetings, adopted a constitution in 1881, and in 1882 founded the Bohemian Art Club [hereinafter “BAC”].[35] Saturday afternoon meetings were devoted to work and study.[36]While Alice was among the first members, she had become a regular teacher at the Academy, and had to forgo some club meetings due to a busy work schedule.[37] Membership required passing an examination and the submittal of works to a committee who decided upon the artist’s merit.[38] In summer, the group went on sketching tours; the first, in the summer of 1882, was in the countryside of Wisconsin, where they rented a farmhouse.[39] Later in the summer, Alice traveled with “The Campers” north to the Upper Peninsula, Michigan near Escanaba. The group was comprised of those from the South Side of Chicago, and on at least one excursion she traveled with three of her sisters.[40] The sketch tours, where the women lived together in a “Bohemian manner” of adventurous excursion, became a favorite practice of the Club.[41] During this period, Alice also arranged student sketching trips. Lorado Taft said of these, “A sketching trip with Alice Kellogg was something more to be desired than party or theater. [The students] counted on it for days ahead. They talked about it for days after. She seemed to hypnotize those young girls into seeing and doing.”[42] Teaching at the Academy and membership in the BAC (which held regular exhibits starting in 1883), proved a positive stimulus for Alice and much needed exposure.[43] As a cooperative group, the women of the Palette Club hoped mutual support and a collective effort would advance their budding careers.

That autumn, her work was in the first exhibition of the Illinois Art Association, formed by the all-male Illinois Club, who had established a clubhouse art gallery. One of her paintings from the summer’s outing, Wild Flowers, was purchased by the club.[44] That the club bought one of her paintings was a bit of an honor as their gallery included works by several well-known established Eastern artists.[45] Their sumptuous gallery, a space of 5,000 square feet, with a “vaulted dome made entirely of stained glass” designed for permanent display of the works they collected, for which a fund of $10,000 had been gathered.[46] Unfortunately, in 1909, the art gallery and all its contents, along with the clubhouse, were destroyed by fire. The art at that time was reportedly worth $175,000 containing “…fifty valuable paintings and seventy-five others of lesser worth.”[47]

In April 1883, the BAC held its first annual exhibition, with a formal opening at the Art Institute. Of the twenty-five members,[48] twenty-one exhibited,[49] and garnered considerable favorable attention.[50] Since the press knew little of these women artists, they were judged entirely by their work. A critic commented on the overall “rare merit” of the exhibition.[51] It was noted that “An exhibition by an association composed entirely of ladies… is an event which has never before occurred in this city, and is probably without a parallel in the country.”[52] While the press knew that some members were amateurs, one critic commented that in general, the members were “artists in the true sense of the word,”[53] and there was genuine admiration: “…a considerable proportion of the exhibits deserve more than the conventional ‘honorable mention.’”[54] The only thing the one critic condemned was the “curious inappropriateness” of the Club’s name, while then extolling their virtues by saying, “… works not only marked by much originality and power, but suggestive of the possession on the part of their authors of that rare and indelible faculty which we call genius.”[55] The exhibition turned out to be much more than the critics had expected, and the professionalism of the works “a surprise” to the public and worthy of further encouragement.[56] It is interesting to note that two men from the Chicago Art League had been overheard stating of the show, which followed after theirs closed, “It is better than ours…” and that perhaps the men should seek to hold joint exhibitions with the women; a prescient comment that would come to fruition only two years later.[57]

Alice exhibited five oil paintings, but despite the large number of watercolors by members, she had none on display.[58] While the press only sketchily noted her painting Von Belginland (location unknown: all works of art have unknown locations unless otherwise noted) it pointed to her early confidence in “breadth and vigor of treatment.”[59] Critics also commented on Alice’s “Venetian Page,” a “well posed and clearly painted” figure who wore a crimson doublet and clock.[60] While her initial recognition was modest, in less than two decades, the press would state she was “at the head of Chicago painters.”[61]

Upon return from Northern Michigan in the late summer of 1883,[62] Alice opened a studio in Central Music Hall, with fellow club member Ida Haskell.[63] While Alice was talented, she felt that her “venture was like putting art to sea in a very small craft, but that it was “diverting, gave plenty of variety, was financially a success, and gained for them a greater independence and a broader view of the world.”[64]

When the Illinois Club opened their second exhibition that fall, she showed a domestic scene, The Children’s Corner.[65] Subject paintings of children and mothers would be important throughout her career. One club member was John Clark Coonley (1838-1882), whose widow, Lydia Coonley (later Coonley-Ward), would become one of Alice’s patrons.

At the BAC’s second exhibition, which opened March 14, 1884. Reports varied as to the size of the crowd at the Art Institute opening, hosting between several hundred,[66] and over a thousand people to “almost universal commendation.”[67] Apparently there was a thinning of the membership ranks, now limited to those “whom art has become a serious profession,” and numbering seventeen, down from twenty-five a year earlier.[68]Alice showed seven oil paintings and six watercolors. One title evidenced Alice’s sketching trips from the earlier summer, A Bit of Old Mackinac. A few of her works were on loan, including the one she had sold to the Illinois Club a year earlier, showing that she had already found patrons.[69] Other artists exhibited works with material from club outings in Wisconsin, referencing woods, deserted cabins, and fall and winter themes.[70] Alice’s work The Mellow Eve, was “one of the noticeable pictures in the collection,” and she showed another of what was becoming her most popular compositions Happy Moments, featuring a mother and child sitting on the floor.[71] While the watercolor works were harshly criticized, the oil paintings found ready buyers, and among all the works, fourteen had been sold within the week, and within two more weeks almost a quarter of the one hundred forty-four works were sold, as the exhibition was extended to accommodate public interest.[72]

The year ended with Alice’s work The Children’s Corner, from the Illinois Club exhibition, and The Tired Little Model sent to New Orleans for display in the Illinois pavilion of the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, one of only a few works so accorded this honor. Her studio mate Ida, traveled to New Orleans to accompany the exhibit, taking a break from Chicago, until the end of the fair.[73] It was announced later that both women had won awards of meritorious work for their submissions of artwork, a decided honor.[74]

As 1885 opened, Alice found herself among a new organization of young, but talented men and women painters, the Western Artists’ Association. Their first exhibition was held in January at the Illinois Club, where Alice exhibited a piece entitled Happy Moments, which one critic said was a “little gem” and that due to its low location on the wall “the backs bent for a look were not a few.”[75] She exhibited again with the group, the following year, before it disbanded, and was superseded by the Chicago Society of Artists.[76]

On April 29, 1885, the Art Institute hosted the BAC’s third annual exhibition. There was a “large and enthusiastic gathering” to view the one hundred and nine works. The Tribune critic noted that Alice’s painting, A Song, was “the best thing ever done” by her, continuing, “The treatment is broad and bold, and the picture is clearly the work of an artist who has good ideas and good command of material.” Fading, was described by the same critic as “a capital work,” while two others showed an “abundance of versatility.”[77]Another critic stated emphatically, that A Song, featuring a gypsy girl with her mandolin, was “The most important as well as the strongest picture of the exhibit…”[78]

Alice had resigned her regular school year duties at the School of the Art Institute beginning in the fall term of October 1884.[79] However, in the Summer of 1885, she and Ida Haskell, who had returned from New Orleans, were charged with teaching a summer program at the School.[80] It was reported, some ten years later, that she had left regular teaching at the school to take private students, where perhaps, she thought this to be more remunerative.[81] It was noted that “she taught her classes in one or another of the business blocks in the heart of the city.”[82]

In the summer of 1885, she and studio mate Ida Haskell took a class of students on a sketching trip to the picturesque Wisconsin Dells.[83] This trip was planned early in the summer, as John Vanderpoel was taking a large group of Art Institute students to Tyrone, PA, in the Alleghany Mountains, for a four-week sketching tour, leaving July 2. It’s possible the two trips were in competition with each other, with the latter being considerably more expensive.[84]

In April 1886, the BAC opened their fourth annual exhibition, moving the locale to the recently opened Stevens Art Building and galleries, where Alice would later have a studio. The opening was attended by more than one hundred people. A review in the Chicago Tribune, stated that the “display, as whole was a very credible one.”[85] However, the Sunday Inter Ocean critic offered a harsh denunciation stating that the Western Art Association show, which preceded the women’s exhibit, “far surpassed” what was on offer by the BAC. Several of the of the BAC members exhibited with the Western Art Association, and it’s likely that there wasn’t much original material remaining for a second show in quick succession, as the critic said, “…the large majority of the pictures, so-called, are merely studies that appear to have taken up a few odd hours instead of a studied worthy effort.” Alice’s work was, to the contrary, termed “good.”[86]

In July Alice again organized a sketch class of young ladies, this time Burlington, Wisconsin, where she accepted local students, as well as those who traveled with her from Chicago.[87] In September the annual Inter-State Industrial Exposition opened on the lakefront, and within the exhibition of nationally recognized artists, was a contingent of local works, one by Alice. Her work was singled out by a critic who, while mentioning how the composition of artists had changed since the early days of the Crosby Opera House Galler7 [1870], thought that only two of the new group noted special attention: “…Alice D. Kellogg and Mrs. M. K. Lusk, make the most credible displays among our local artists…”[88] The exhibition catalog entry showed that Alice she had moved into the Weber Music Hall (later the Chickering Hall Building).[89]

She resumed teaching at the Art Institute for the 1886-1887 school year, conducting morning classes in drawing from the antique.[90] Yet the time was approaching when she would need to finish her formal education by studying in Europe, such an endeavor being advantageous to most artist’s careers at the time. The Tribune reported:

Miss Kellogg has not yet pursued any course of study outside of this city, and it may be a great gratification to the people of Chicago who encourage art to see how much this young girl has been able to do here…. The course of study which she intents pursuing in Europe in a short time will no doubt bring rich results, for the patience of the young lady, the assiduity of her study, and her active, vigorous personality need but the help of practice and broader instruction to make her something out of the usual.”[91]

Readying herself for Europe, she had but one entry (a painting previously exhibited) in the BAC’s annual show, where one hundred seventy-five were on view at the Stevens Gallery. Alice’s technique was labeled a risky one, laying down paint in broad brushstrokes, and then “smoothing” it laboriously across the canvas.[92] Concurrently she a painting of hers was shown at the Blocki Gallery in Chicago and it was noted that she “adopted a manner of painting which requires a good deal of courage… her work is good… and even better, her feeling is deep.” [93]

Before leaving for Europe, she took one last look at her beloved Wisconsin countryside in August 1887, at Port Washington and Racine. She then crossed the Atlantic in October along with her sister Gertrude, school chum Ida Haskell, and Ida’s mother, Mrs. Hanna Haskell, as chaperone, to study in Paris at the Académie Julian.[94] At that time, Alice looked forward to spending two, possibly three, years in Europe.[95] Today we are thankful for a window into her life though correspondence of a rather unsystematic, intimate, and conversational tone that went back and forth via steamer between Alice, friends, and family during her time abroad between 1887 and 1889.[96]

Despite periods of homesickness, Alice remained steadfast in a commitment to gain as much as possible from this sojourn. Once settled into apartments, she immersed herself in art intending to “work, work, work.”[97] At first, she studied at the Julian for half days from eight until twelve and then spent afternoons in galleries and studios.[98] The first winter in Paris, she studied under Gustave Clarence Radolphe Boulanger (1824-188) and Jules-Joseph Lefèbvre (1836-1911), of whom she was a particular favorite.[99] She immensely admired the work of instructor “Dagnan-Bouvret the Great,”[100] who reminded her of artist Arthur Bowen Davies (1862-1928) for whom Alice had romantic feelings. Davies had been a student of Alice’s, and the two shared an interest in the metaphysical.[101]

By December 1887, after only a short time in Europe, Alice was finding herself, writing home, “I am almost free of anybody in my work and it is a freedom to be prized.”[102] She was much taken by Paris city life, writing, “The room was twilightly through our pretty curtains, I could see the picturesquely irregular contour of the roofs opposite jutting against the morning sky…From the street below came the sound of the labors of the never-resenting work-people. The calls of the men guiding, thereby their great draught horses; the swish of the brooms sweeping clean the streets—the call of some vendor of something…now a cab dashing by—then a dog’s bark all these drifted up to me…”[103]

In February 1888, Alice wrote to her sister Kate that marriage seemed out of her control. She could only put the matter into the hands of others.[104] If she were to marry Arthur Davies, it would because it was the natural thing to do.[105] Even though she and Arthur remained close, Alice had some trepidation. However, she received letters from him regularly.[106] Her primary concern was a fear that marriage might hold her back in advancing a career.[107] Probably as a diversion, she intensified interest on developing her art, not in marriage, and found herself “more thoroughly in” her work than she had ever been.[108] Kate advised Alice “Carpe diem,” and with that Alice filled her day with painting, drawing, sketching, and working so that she would not be so homesick.[109]

In April 1888, Alice’s work was accepted into the Salon (colloquially known as the “Paris Salon”), organized annually by the Société des Artistes Français.[110] She was proud that her portrait of Gertrude was shown, even though she did not think it her best work, saying it was “not half what I ought to do.”[111] The reason why she thought she could do better, despite the acceptance into the Salon, was that, in a sense, acceptance of Julian students was often guaranteed. Alice said of this situation, that just being a student at the Julian accounted for “more than half of our acceptance” and it was a fact that was “undeniable” and “hardly concealed.”[112]

That month she had joined Art Institute President Charles L. Hutchinson and Director William M. R. French, and other faculty, to travel in Rome.[113] At the end of the school year, fellow teachers at the School of the Art Institute gathered in the library to send her greetings as she looked forward to a summer visit in the Dutch countryside with sister Kate.[114] She found Rijsoord delightful as a sketching place where days were “full of promise” and the windy nights so got into her blood that she gave way to the impulse of skipping.[115] After vacation, Alice wanted to go home, but she intended to hold on until the following summer. The introspective Alice sensed something was lacking, but she did not know what it was.[116] At that time, Alice claimed her year abroad was the hardest of her life.[117]

In September1888, Alice was going to enroll in the Académie Julian, when she discovered that “dear M. Boulanger” suddenly died.[118] She attended the funeral of the “best teacher” she ever had.[119] Afterward, she felt a personal loss; Alice had found his instruction “the simplest--most broad--most rousing.”[120]  Alice wrote, “My dear M. Boulanger is gone and now I do not know just what to do, but I think Colarossi will probably put us on his list as he is near where we hope to be, cheaper in his terms, and has teachers equally as good as any at Julian’s.”[121]

There was trepidation on her part, however, about studying with men. She visited the co-educational studio of the Académie Colarossi to get a feel for the activities there. She wondered about working side-by-side with men. Asking a male friend, who was at the Colarossi, about this circumstance, he stated: “I would not, nor could I advise any woman of good family, one of my sisters for example, to get there. If you didn't know a word of French it could perhaps be acceptable, but these French people are not decent,”[122]

However, the Colarossi was “good, cheap and near” her apartment in the Latin Quarter at No. 16 rue le Verrier, where she settled by October 1888.[123] She and her roommates paid 1,650 francs a year for the four-bedroom apartment, which Alice did not think very much.[124] Once in the studio, she found her “own free space” and was far more content than during the previous winter.[125] She felt free of the bondage she had earlier sensed in regard to her work.[126] The change gave her a different feeling and she found “active pleasure” in her work.[127]

Alice’s enthusiasm no doubt stemmed from the excitement of studying with Gustave-Claude-Etienne Courtois (1852-1923) and Jean-André Rixens (1846-1925).[128] The Colarossi school was “in an artistic part of Paris” where artists congregated and was thus far less conventional than many other parts of the city.[129] At the Colarossi, Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret (1852-1929) criticized her work on a single occasion.[130] Concurrently, Alice also studied with the successful American teacher Charles Augustus (Shorty) Lasar (1856-1936), as was common for many American women.[131] She felt her experiences with the masters and their schools was to be a “gradual digesting process,” expressing that the “weary weeks had their value.”[132] In her last winter in Europe she wanted to advance as rapidly as possible, feeling that only “procrastination” could hold her back.[133]

The Colarossi was less rigidly organized than the Julian, and Alice enjoyed the liberty to do as she pleased. Her classmates included French, American, English, and some Russian, Danish, and Swedish students.[134] She found the models, sometimes dressed in Arab garb, or a pretty woman in plush satin, better than at the Julian, and the tuition was a bargain at only twenty francs per month. Her day passed with school from eight to twelve, then lunch, and later tours of the museums and galleries. At six p.m. she had dinner, then two hours of reading or writing, followed by evening classes. She found the hard work to be great fun, with a serious purpose. She liked her instructors, since they both taught “simply, broadly, and to the point.” Courtois was a florid young man who spoke in a low pleasant voice with great decision and had a sense of seriousness and power. He was one who blew through the Atelier “like a strong summer storm, clearing the atmosphere.” Courtois was “impartial” and “very just in his criticisms—very accurate.” She found him “somewhat like Boulanger in his direct attack and his lack of polite fibbing.”[135] In his first criticism of Alice’s work, Courtois only spoke twenty minutes in the room and was very good to her. He was “electric” in the way he left her “with a brave determination to go on, to attack, to win!” A man not of an “ideal temperament,” Courtois was “honest” and “strong.” His frequent expression was “Frankly painted.”[136] Alice admired her Master so much, that she journeyed to visit the Courtois studio far outside the old Paris fortifications in the direction of the Arc de Triumph.[137]

Rixens also criticized Alice’s work.[138] At one time, Rixens gave the men and women a remarkable theme—a mother nursing twins and three other children at play. Alice did it in color as an inside scene looking outside side a cottage window admitting, “I have rather a weakness for mothers and children,” but considered the task challenging. The mother and child theme would find its way into Alice’s work later in her career, garnering much acclaim. Rixen called the piece “human” and “composed well,” while Alice thought it “full of the faults of inexperience.” Yet the work was named “best” and was “to be stretched, hung upon the wall, and enter the concours.”[139] Despite any positive comments, Alice felt class criticisms were an “agony to be endured.”[140]

She did not feel easy with her circumstances, even though she demonstrated so much skill that other students thought she had previously studied in Paris or in New York. She found others’ complimentary talk upsetting because it made her “wild” that she could not do “the solidly good things” she wanted to do. Sometimes she had so much frustration that she became “ill” and gave up after various attempts when she did not get her sketches right. On occasions, she had to “treat away a sick headache.”[141] There were instances, however, where she felt unusually well and viewed herself an improved individual because of her art; having changed considerably since being away from home for two years.[142]

Alice had never been totally alone in France as there was a large contingent of American students and a continuous flock of friendly visitors she could commune with. She found moral support in “each others sympathy and encouragement” as they learned together.[143] On Thanksgiving Day 1888, Alice shared dinner with a friendly face in Caroline Dupee Wade (1857-1947), an instructor from the Art Institute.[144]

Back home, at the close of 1888, Alice particularly wondered whether anyone had heard from Orno Tyler, (a man ten years her senior, whom she eventually married) and if he was well.[145] Alice was interested in Orno, and she wanted her family to ask him to Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas, and to ring in the new year, in her absence.[146] She also recalled John Gage, who was then in college, whom she claimed she had once loved.[147] Alice admitted she liked college boys and found them “breezy” or lighthearted. [148]

As it turned out, Alice spent her own Christmas and birthday in “Merrie England” with English friend Amy B. Atkinson (1859-1916) and others, at the home of clergyman, Reverend Atkinson. Ida Haskell had insisted that Alice not miss out on the trip to England. While there, Alice saw Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the National Gallery, and St. Paul’s Westminster Abbey. She found London had “cheap” shopping. There was also a party to be given on December 27, possibly in connection with Alice’s birthday. Davies remembered her birthday and sent not only a letter, but a birthday book, prettily bound in seal skin leather, of selections from George Eliot. The trip put Alice in a “peculiarly-magnetic sensitive mood” even though it was “not a restful time.” The hectic schedule certainly kept Alice trim, for while in England, she was weighed and measured at only five feet and a half inch tall and 115 pounds with her winter and outside wraps. She came to love England with its welcoming people and quaint Old York with its red tiled village roofs. Unfortunately, by January 1889, when she returned to Paris, she had a sense she was “all used up” and not entirely herself. She was in a state of mind where she felt low seeing herself as one who failed ten times a day, got sea-sick, had headaches, got angry and sad, and doubted herself.[149] Despite all her friendships and associations in Europe, she still wished she “knew some wise, wise person” with whom she could talk.[150]

Realizing that her “careless” and “happy-go-lucky” ways, especially during the tour of England, had greatly diminished her credit account, she began to make copies of paintings from the Louvre to sell. She had heard that such works could bring $100 dollars.[151] Alice absolutely hated finances. Aware of her expenses for studio rent, fuel, and school tuition, she drew from her account at the rate of sixty-seven dollars a month. She begged Mr. Holt, who cared for her finances, to please tell her, in not too technical terms, how much money she had left. She also promised him that she would give him drawing lessons if he would teach her some business sense.[152]

She continued with sketch classes and sought release from tension by attending a gymnasium class three times a week.[153] She learned to swing off on the flying trapeze even though her arms and wrists were not too strong and did not have “one quiver of fear.”[154] She preferred the comfortable clothes of a man, purchasing very full trousers and a belt, which she wore with her blue jersey and a red rolling collar. Others said she was still “perfectly modest and prettier than the rest.”[155] Alice warned her sister Gertrude not to be surprised if she came home a liberated woman without corset and wearing very few underclothes.[156] She had earlier kidded her sister that their parents would think she had grown “too Bohemian.”[157]

Around this time, she concentrated on a portrait of her sister Gertrude [collection of the Bowie Family, entitled Miss G.E.K.].[158] Perhaps in part because she did not work steadily on the picture, she found it difficult to settle upon whether it was finished. By February, however, Alice said it was “nearly a la finis,” having worked on it “in spots and whenever possible.”[159] She wrote, “Everyone likes my portrait of G. and thinks its [sic] sure to go into the Salon.”[160] Alice ordered a lovely frame fitting for its hopeful entry into the important annual exhibition. The highly self-critical Alice saw all its faults even though she recognized improvement in her work.[161] By adding a chair, a table with some soft creamy drapery, a book, and some gloves, she felt it looked much better, and felt that in many ways, the portrait was the best work she ever did, yet still added “I could do better I believe now.”[162]

While she wrote that she could be a “successful economist” and still be happy, she was lured by travel and began planning an Italian trip to Rome, Pompeii, Naples, and Venice, also trying to squeeze in Switzerland. She loved to get away to the countryside and intended to stay in cheap hotels and take her old plush jacket. In preparation, she recovered an old umbrella in half silk, bought a hat for less than fifty cents, and re-heeled old shoes. Alice felt “a perfect [extravagant] pig” but thought these purchases and travel were justified. She thought other family members would have a chance later and she would then help them along.[163] Perhaps this extravagance was in anticipation of the acceptance in May of both her portrait of Gertrude, and a small pastel, at the Paris Universal Exposition.[164] After spending five weeks in sunny Italy and “invigorating Switzerland,” they returned in time for visits to the Exposition, “two brown, happy and tired maidens”[165]

Alice’s little pastel was hung “on the line,” that is, at eye level.[166] And even though her life-size oil portrait of Gertrude was hung rather high, she was thrilled that the jury had accepted it nonetheless.[167] The painting was an admirable color study with soft gradations of light.[168] What made the painting so outstanding was Alice’s power to express the unity between the Gertrude and the flowers.[169] Alice was thrilled upon viewing the exhibition to see so many great works of art together in one place. She was in a state of joy and disbelief that her work hung in the same halls as the greatest French artists of the day. She wrote that viewing these masterworks in one location was more important to her education than all her combined studio work. A very humbled Alice questioned what she had done to deserve all she had encountered in Paris.[170] She immersed herself in the excitement of the fair, walking up the Rue Bonaparte to the river, through the Tuilleries, along the Rue de Rivoli, and through the Place de la Conards, among the thousands of people and under flaming lights of gas-jets. She watched a Venetian fete on the river with the Eiffel Tower in the background and saw colored lights, like tiaras, gleaming against the darkened sky and shouted ‘brava’ when boats floated by with music. She felt awed when the Eiffel Tower suddenly became lit with a dull explosive sound, a beautiful “pillar of fire.” As she marched with the happy mob, led by two cornets, through the streets singing “Marseille,” she knew her time in Paris was finally complete.[171]

Having arrived at such a culmination, Alice sensed a letdown after the frenzy of the fair, and by June she was tired of the great city and longed for home, where her “unfortunately and abnormally active brain” could rest, and “be led like a child for a time” until she regained some mental stamina. Yet she also said, “I want to work, and will work all the rest of my life, and enjoy it.”[172]

She anticipated a workplace in downtown Chicago, knowing that she could accomplish little working from home. She tossed about the notion of continuing the private classes she gave prior to her departure, to repay her family for the expensive European study. When Director Mr. French of the Art Institute met with her in Paris, she could not tell whether he wanted her back, even though he conveyed a hope that she would commit herself to the Institute. This lack of commitment by Mr. French bothered her as she preferred “brutal honesty.” Sardonically, she believed that whether Mr. French wanted her back at the Institute depended upon the perception of how her paintings had been hung while in Paris—whether her work caused sufficient attention. Alice hated policy and the Institute authorities irritated her to the point that she was no longer “sweetly inclined toward them.” She despised their “Patriarchal interest” in her and did not know the purpose of Mr. French’s concerns over her financial state; he expressed he should have done more for her, as they had done for Caroline Wade, who not only received a stipend from the Art Institute for study abroad, but was supported financially by wealthy donors to the museum.[173] While fond of the students, Alice was not in much “sympathy with the spirit of the school” as it was then conducted. She found it too pharisaical. She therefore did not want to go back unless she could teach in her own way. Alice preferred “not to teach at all,” strictly speaking, but live what she felt and show others how to be an artist. In June, she wrote that John Vanderpoel, who had become head of the life class, relayed surprise that she had heard nothing from the Institute, especially since a discussion at a teacher’s meeting had included matters of Alice.[174]

Despite her successes, she still harbored self-doubts, and compared herself by the standards she imagined of her friends, who seemed imminently busier than she.[175] Alice was relieved when in June she had nearly finished an oil study of a mother and child.[176] The idea of this particular painting, entitled The Mother (also known as Mother and Child) (Hull-House, Chicago), one that would define her work to this very day, originated sometime around December 1887, when Alice made a sketch of a mother feeding her baby.[177] While Alice had not thought the effort very good, she felt it was one of her best works, noting she completed it quietly, feeling deep inside it was an “honest effort.”[178] No doubt, one of her strengths was the ability to take time with a work, “to keep a thing about to look at—and work on it until it grew complete and to a more full realization of what one imagined in a subject.”[179] Little did Alice know at the time how much recognition this painting would bring to her and the impact it would have on her career.[180]

Afraid of how she would find her place back home, after having been away for so long, Alice began to mentally prepare for the return to Chicago.[181] How better to celebrate this homecoming than to complete some last-minute travel? She made ready for a mid-July jaunt to Scotland and York to meet her friend Amy and remain there up until the moment she debarked for Chicago.[182] Her intent was to leave for New York in early August, where she wanted to stay two or three days to see Davies.[183] She had earlier written, “If Arthur and I find that we two, all lacking as we are, are necessary to each other, then I hope I may marry. And if we are not, pray heaven that I may be brave.”[184]

Alice returned to Chicago in the fall of 1889 she and resumed teaching privately and at the School of the Art Institute.[185] At the close of the school year in June 1890, she was named to the school prize jury committee, along with Walter McEwen (1860-1943) and Frederic Arthur Bridgman (1847-1928). At that time, McEwen and Bridgman were two of the most esteemed artists in America, and for Alice to be chosen by the school to join them in awarding prizes was an honor.[186]

In July, The Graphic reported she was, oddly, going to “leave and make her home in New York City.”[187] Perhaps she viewed the eastern metropolis as a more advantageous place to pursue her career, or she went to attempt to solidify her relationship with Arthur Davies. He had met his future wife, Virginia Meriwether, that same summer in New York. Virginia was an accomplished physician from a wealthy family, and they married two years later.[188]

Now permanently installed in Chicago, she took studio space at the Stevens Gallery Building, 24 Adams Street, where William C. Stevens had an art gallery where the BAC had previously held a series of annual exhibitions.[189] She also reunited with friends at the BAC, which had been renamed in 1888, as the Palette Club.[190] The club had “become famous throughout the country owing part to its having been the first organization of women painters and secondly for the strength of its work.”[191] “A great number of the Palette Club members were first-prize pupils” of the Art Institute and many had studied abroad, which critics thought accounted for the “general excellence in the works displayed.”[192] Critics applauded the “breezy, Western independence” about the club, that “didn’t hang on to men’s coat tails in order to be pulled before the public.”[193]

Returning once again to the Art Institute, where the Palette Club now kept its headquarters,[194] the women held their seventh annual exhibit in April 1890. Reviews of the show were somewhat mixed, but it was adjudged by one critic that they had outdone the all-male Chicago Society of Artists, whose exhibit opened in a separate gallery at the Art Institute on the same evening.[195] Alice showed a great many works, including her sympathetically rendered Salon portrait of Gertrude, Miss G. E. K..[196] Alice had no intention of selling the painting, and thus did not give it a price, while all the other works by her and member artists were for sale. She also showed The Mother priced at $500, a considerable sum.[197] Interestingly, the press said that it lacked the same concentration as the painting of Gertrude and was not as good as the drawing of the same subject.[198] The press considered Alice’s best piece a little pastel called Revery,[199] which she had previously shown at the 1888 Salon.[200] Of her work in general, one critic commented, “Miss Kellogg’s exhibit is large and the excellence of her work leads one to high anticipations of her future. Two years of well-directed study in Paris have given her a facile command of brush and crayon, and she is gifted with a delicate sense of color and of pictorial fitness. Her future progress will be watched with eager solicitude.”[201]

That Fall, the Inter-State Industrial Exposition held its fourteenth and final exhibition. The art exhibit included most of the country’s greatest artists resident both in the U.S. and abroad. Two of Alice’s pastels passed the jury.[202] A critic mentioned, “Miss Alice D. Kellogg also shows two pastel portraits spirited in pose and pleasing in color.”[203] One of these was a portrait of “Miss I. W.” The sitter was undoubtedly civil rights activist Ida B. Wells, who Alice came to know through their Hull-House connections.

Alice’s association with Jane Addams and Hull-House went back several years. In fact, Addams’ correspondence from Munich, in January 1888, mentioned that she had a house with her and that they visited sites together.[204] An enduring relationship developed that supported both their causes. On the one hand, Addams helped Alice’s career through personal commissions and public exhibitions at the Hull House, and on the other hand, Alice brought exposure of fine art to neighborhood people through her contributions at Hull-House.”[205] She was the original instructor in art: “Alice Kellogg Tyler was the first of the Chicago artists who so lavishly [gave] their services to Hull-House.” When Hull-House opened its Butler Gallery in 1891 (named for benefactor Edward Burgess Butler (1853-1928) a retired businessman and artist), Alice was a key component of the celebrated event. She, along with Art Institute president Charles L. Hutchinson, and millionaire businessman Albert Arnold Sprague, “contributed a good part of the collection[206]

Alice’s painting The Mother, “…a tender and sympathetic painting,”[207] gained national attention when it was accepted for exhibition by the Society of American Artists in April 1891.[208] One newspaper said that “The hanging committee gave the place of honor to [it].”[209] Some years later it was reported that she hesitated to send a picture at all “…because the general average excellence of this American society is higher than the general average excellence of all European exhibitions. The Jury are so strict that they often see their own pictures rejected right before their eyes. Under no sort of pull does a work go in, only on its merit.”[210] A critic noted the work was “…sturdy of type, with a swathed infant asleep in her lap. Executed with discretion and handled with vigor.”[211] Among Society members were the country’s leading artists including John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) and Childe Hassam (1859-1935). The painting “appealed to the members…so forcefully that the artist was elected to membership, an honor not frequently accorded to exhibitors…”[212] For an artist to be elected as a member of the Society upon the merit of a single work was an extraordinary tribute, with no other Chicagoan ever winning such distinction.[213]

That same month, the Palette Club held their eighth annual reception and exhibition at the Art Institute. As a founding member Alice was part of the jury of selection along with fellow artists Ida J. Burgess (1858-1934), Annie Weaver Jones (c.1862-after 1911), Mrs. Margaret J. MacDonald Pullman (1847-1892), and Pauline A. Dohn [later Rudolph] (1865-1934).[214] Over two thousand invitations were mailed for a display of some two hundred works.[215] One critic felt that two of the best canvases were Alice’s The Salute (at one time owned by Jane Addams Hull House)[216] and Ida Haskell’s Flax-Workers at Rest, both Holland scenes.[217] One portrait of a young woman, with a pink and yellow rose corsage, dressed in white and set against a white background, an extremely difficult arrangement to paint, was called “among the best shown.”[218] In the landscape painting entitled The Call, she placed the figure of a woman costumed in typical Dutch attire in the foreground of the composition. With its setting sun of warm tints Alice showed off her gift to create lighting effects that were simultaneously brilliant yet soft. She apparently chose her subject matter wisely for the field of long grass and scraggly primroses juxtaposed against a vista of distant hills appealed to F. F. Ballard of Oak Park who purchased the painting.[219] Her pastel study of a young lady in gray, which she previously showed at the Paris Exposition, was described as “more sympathetic than either of her oils.”[220]