Collection documents the Wade Corset Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota, founded by inventor, Alzira Hewitt Cowardin Wade.
Content Description:
Ephemera and photographs related to the Wade Corset Company founded by inventor, Alzira Hewitt Cowardin Wade.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into one series, topically.
Biographical:
Alzira Hewitt Cowardin Wade (1839-1929), was born in Huntsville, Alabama to Colin Manley Cowardin and Mary Hewitt Morehead. She was one of six children that included Agnes Hunter Cowardin; Mary Elizabeth Cowardin; Margaret Cowardin; Henry Cowardin and Robert Cowardin.
She married Dr. James Howlett Hunter on June 11, 1857 and had two children, Colin Hiram Hunter and Alzira Allie Belle Hunter. Dr. Hunter died of Yellow Fever in 1860. Her second marriage was to William Elijah Wade on June 26, 1866, and the couple had two children, Margaret Ruth Wade and George Munson Wade.
Wade worked as a seamstress and established the Wade Corset Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota, expanding eventually to New York City, Atlantic City, Paris and London. The company offered corset waists, abdominal bands, bust supports, corsage ruffles and girdles. Wade patented an abdominal supporter (US 517,941) in 1894; a reversible corset busk (US 640,839) in 1900; and an apparel corset (US 656,913) in 1900.
Provenance:
Collection donated by Anne Colby, July 2022.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
The collected papers of Everett Shinn measure 3.1 linear feet and date from 1877 to 1958. Found within the papers are biographical material; correspondence with friends and colleagues; personal business records; art work, including two sketchbooks of designs for Belasco's Stuyvesant Theatre; notes and writings; eight scrapbooks; printed material; and numerous photographs of Shinn, his colleagues, and his work.
Scope and Contents note:
The collected papers of Everett Shinn measure 3.1 linear feet and date from 1877 to 1958. Found within the papers are biographical material; correspondence with friends and colleagues; personal business records; art work, including two sketchbooks of designs for Belasco's Stuyvesant Theatre; notes and writings; eight scrapbooks; printed material; and numerous photographs of Shinn, his colleagues, and his work.
Biographical material includes miscellaneous biographical accounts and a membership certificate from the American Watercolor Society.
Correspondence consists of letters from Shinn's friends and colleagues, primarily from author Poultney Bigelow. There are also letters from decorator Elsie De Wolfe, dramatist Clyde Fitch, and artists Charles Dana Gibson, William Glackens, and George Luks, whose letters are illustrated. There are scattered letters from A. Stirling Calder, Theodore Dreiser, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, Julia Marlowe, Claude Rains, Ruth Warrick, Alexander Woollcott, and Mahonri Young.
Personal business records consist of two account books recording art work used in publications and loaned for exhibitions, and miscellaneous invoices.
Artwork consists of two sketchbooks of designs for the Stuyvesant Theatre murals and miscellaneous drawings by Shinn. Artwork by others, including H. B. Eddy, James Ben Ali Haggin, Colonel Hegan, Oliver Henfold, George Luks, and Philip Nolan, consist primarily of caricatures.
Notes and writings include a handwritten draft of Shinn's play Hazel Weston or More Sinned Against Than Usual, notes for a book on art, poems, and typescripts by Shinn including "Plush and Cut Glass," a book about George Luks.
Eight scrapbooks primarily contain clippings. Scrapbook 2 contains clippings, exhibition catalogs, a note from Stuart Benson, an illustrated postcard from Ed, and scattered photographs.
Additional printed material is primarily comprised of clippings, but there are also exhibition announcements and catalogs for Shinn, reproductions of art work, booklets, and miscellaneous printed material. Rare programs for plays written by Shinn list cast members, including Wilfred Buckland, Edith Glackens, William J. Glackens, James Ben Ali Haggin, Robert Henri, J. E. Laub, Thomas Newell Metcalf, James M. Preston, Florence Scovel Shinn, and John Sloan.
Numerous photographs are found within the collection and depict Shinn as a boy, in various Philadelphia newspaper offices, in costume for stage performances, at the easel, and with colleagues, including Robert Henri and John Sloan. Photographs of colleagues also include author Poultney Bigelow, decorator Elsie De Wolfe, portrait painter James Ben Ali Haggin, actress Julia Marlowe, and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts classmates William Glackens and Florence Scovel. There are also photographs of Shinn's residences, exhibition installations, set designs and stagings of plays, murals, and other art work.
Arrangement note:
The collection is arranged as 8 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical material, 1953 (Box 1; 2 folders)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1899-1952 (Box 1, 4; 61 folders)
Series 3: Personal business records, 1898-1928 (Box 1; 3 folders)
Series 4: Artwork, 1893-1928 (Box 1, 4, OV 6; 10 folders)
Series 5: Notes and writings, 1922-1951 (Box 1; 9 folders)
Series 7: Printed material, 1894-1958 (Box 2, 4; 21 folders)
Series 8: Photographs, 1877-1950 (Box 2-4, OV 7; 1.3 linear feet)
Biographical/Historical note:
Everett Shinn (1876-1953) was a painter, muralist, illustrator, and theatrical scene designer who worked primarily in New York City. Shinn was a member of "The Eight," a group of painters known for their realistic portrayal of American urban life.
Everett Shinn was born on November 6, 1876 in Woodstown, New Jersey, the son of Isaiah and Josephine Ransley Shinn. He attended Quaker schools until 1890 when he went to the Spring Garden Institute in Philadelphia, studying engineering and industrial design until 1893.
Shinn enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts between 1893 and 1897. During this time he was hired as an artist-reporter for the Philadelphia Press, the Inquirer, and the Ledger. He also forged his friendships with painters George Luks, John Sloan, William J. Glackens, and Robert Henri, all future members of "The Eight."
Shinn moved to New York City in 1897 and quickly found employment as an illustrator for the newspaper The World. In 1898, he married Florence Scovel, the first of his four wives. In 1900, he traveled to England and France, and was later employed by Harper's Weekly. Shinn befriended decorator Elsie De Wolf and architect Stanford White, and designed and executed murals for the homes of their clients. Shinn created eighteen mural panels for David Belasco's Stuyvesant Theatre that opened in 1907, and murals for the Council Room of the Trenton, New Jersey City Hall in 1911. His most notable murals were created for the Oak Room of New York's Plaza Hotel in the 1940s.
In 1908, Shinn participated in the seminal group exhibition of "The Eight" at Macbeth Gallery. In 1911, he was included in the Exhibition of Independent Artists, and was invited to send works to the International Exhibition of Modern Art, better known as the Armory Show, in 1913, but for an unknown reason, declined. Shinn exhibited regularly and his works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Delaware Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.
Throughout his career Shinn was fascinated by the theater and the act of performance, which he made the subject of many of his works. He also wrote, directed, and performed in his own plays. Between 1917 and 1920, Shinn worked as an art director for Sam Goldwin at Goldwyn Pictures. He also worked for Inspiration Pictures from 1920 to 1923, and for William Randolph Hearst at Cosmopolitan Pictures in 1923. He divorced Florence Scovel in 1912, and married Corinne Baldwin in 1913, with whom he had two children, Janet and Davidson. He divorced again in 1921, married Gertrude Chase in 1924, and divorced again in 1932. In 1933, Shinn married his fourth wife, Paula Downing; they divorced in 1942.
From 1935 to 1939, he covered a murder trial for the Boston Traveler, exhibited his work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and won a prize for watercolor at an exhibition at the Chicago Art Institute. In the 1940s Shinn participated in exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and at the American-British Art Center. In 1949, Shinn was made an Academician of the National Academy of Design, and in 1951, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Everett Shinn died on May 1, 1953 in New York City.
Related Archival Materials note:
Additional Everett Shinn papers are available at the Helen Farr Sloan Library, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware.
Provenance:
The bulk of the Everett Shinn collection was acquired via purchase from art dealer Thurston Thatcher between 1958-1964. Art collector Howard Lipman donated additional material in 1962. Five negatives of Shinn's work were donated in 1969 by Dr. Milton Luria, an acquaintance of Shinn's son, Davidson. The photograph of Everett Shinn, John Sloan, and Robert Henri was donated on an unknown date by an unidentified donor. The handwritten draft of Shinn's play Hazel Weston or More Sinned Against Than Usual was acquired via auction purchase in 2011.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Letters to the Sterners, primarily regarding art and cultural matters.
Letters are from: John Barbirolli, George G. Barnard, Cecelia Beaux, George Bellows, Emile Bourdelle, Poultney Bigelow, Emma Calve, William M. Chase, Winston Churchill, Constance Collier, John Dewey, Gerald du Maurier, John Drew, James N. Dunn, Joseph Duveen, Elsie Ferguson, Arnold Genthe, Charles D. Gibson, Warren G. Harding, Charles W. Hawthorne, Robert Henri, Walter Hampden, Oliver Herford, Leslie Howard, Sir Henry Irving, Eva Le Gallienne, Julie Marlow, Philip Merivale, Maurice Mozkowski, Alla Nazimova, Joseph Pennell, Raphael Pompelli, Howard Pyle, Theodore Roosevelt, John S. Sargent, G. Bernard Shaw, Sir Herbert B. Tree, Mary A. Ward, J. Alden Weir, Edith Wharton, Francis Wilson, and Israel Zangwill.
Biographical / Historical:
Illustrator and painter; New York City. Sterner's wife, Marie, was an art dealer.
Provenance:
Microfilmed 1956 by the Archives of American Art with other art-related papers in the Manuscript Division of the New York Public Library. Included in the microfilming project were selected papers of the Art Division and the Prints Division.
Restrictions:
The Archives of American art does not own the original papers. Use is limited to the microfilm copy.
Occupation:
Art dealers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Illustrators -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Letters, 1879-1918, of Adelaide Deming: She writes to Victor Hugo, 1879, requesting an autographed photo of him; the reply from his secretary includes the photo. Booker T. Washington requests a painting for the Tuskegee Institute, and in a second note acknowledges a drawing which she sent. Other letters are from Julia Marlowe Sothern, Hamilton Holt, William Beebe, and Helen Woodrow Bones.
Biographical / Historical:
Adelaide Deming, born in Litchfield, Conn., was a mural and landscape painter.
Provenance:
Litchfield Historical Society lent the Adelaide Deming letters in addition to the Anson Dickinson sketchbook and sketches, which have been described separately.
Restrictions:
The Archives of American art does not own the original papers. Use is limited to the microfilm copy.
