Among the talented women artists who rose to prominence during the late nineteenth century, Edith Prellwitz enjoyed a long and successful career as a painter, winning many awards and honors for her figure subjects and landscapes.
Born Edith Mitchill in South Orange, New Jersey, the artist was the daughter of Cornelius S. Mitchill, a successful businessman and his wife, Helen Reed Mitchill. Growing up in an affluent and cultured household, she was well versed in French and German and was a regular visitor to concerts and operas. At the age of eighteen she made her first trip to Europe, studying art informally in Germany, Italy, Paris, and London.
Edith Mitchill Prellwitz - Among the Roses, ca. 1895
Oil on canvas, 17 x 55 inches
Upon returning home, Prellwitz enrolled at the Art Students League of New York. Between 1883 and 1889, she received instruction from such noted figure painters as George de Forest Brush, William Merritt Chase, Walter Shirlaw, and Kenyon Cox. In March of 1888, the year she was elected women's vice-president at the League, she began an apprenticeship at the Tiffany Glass Company in New York. However, the urge to become a painter was stronger; that December she left the Tiffany firm to concentrate exclusively on fine art.
While pursuing her goal of becoming a professional painter, Prellwitz emerged as an early arts advocate for women. Indeed, in 1888, she was elected women's vice-president at the Art Students League. The following year, she and a group of fellow painters--Grace Fitz-Randolph, Adele Frances Bedell, Anita C. Ashley, and Elizabeth S. Cheever--banded together to form the Woman's Club Art, organized to promote the work of women artists in the United States. The group, which Prellwitz felt could be "productive of something good," later evolved into the National Association of Women Artists.
In 1889 Prellwitz went to Paris, refining her skills as a figure painter at the Académie Julian under William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury. During her eighteen months in the French capital, she also received criticism from the painter Gustave Courtois, possibly at the Académie Colarossi.
Returning to New York in 1891, Edith established a studio, first at 49 West 22nd Street and later in the Holbein Studio Building at 152 West 55th Street, where she renewed her contact with Henry Prellwitz, whom she had met earlier at the Art Students League. They were subsequently married in October of 1894. A year later, using the $250 cash award Edith received upon winning the Norman W. Dodge Prize at the National Academy of Design, the couple built a small cottage known as "Prellwitz's Shanty" in Cornish, New Hampshire, a favorite summer haunt for artists, writers and musicians. During her trips to Cornish, Edith painted intimate, impressionist-inspired landscapes, including a view of the garden of the famous Beaux-Arts sculptor Augustus-Saint-Gaudens (ca. 1896; Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire).
When their Cornish residence was destroyed by fire in 1898, Edith and Henry began spending their summers in Peconic, Long Island, joining a coterie of fellow artists that included their good friends Irving Wiles and Edward August Bell. In 1911, they acquired an early nineteenth century house on Peconic Bay which became their year-round residence three years later.
Peconic remained Prellwitz's home base until 1928, when she and Henry moved into a cooperative apartment on East 41st Street in Manhattan. There, Edith painted views of the skyscrapers outside her studio window. In 1938, the Prellwitz's returned permanently to Peconic.
Prellwitz exhibited her work--portraits of women and children, allegorical figure pieces, and landscapes--in the major national annuals from the late 1880s until the late 1930s. She was the recipient of many distinguished awards including the National Academy of Design's second Hallgarten Prize (1894) and the Julia A. Shaw Prize (1929). She also received a silver medal at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta (1895) and a bronze medal at the Pan-American Exposition, held in Buffalo, New York in 1901. In 1899, she had joint exhibitions with her husband at the Charcoal Club in Baltimore and at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
Prellwitz was elected an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1906. She also belonged to the Society of American Artists and the New York Water Color Club. In addition to producing easel paintings and watercolors, she created a major mural for the Universalist Church in Southold, New York in 1926. She was also the author of "Tempest in Paint Pots," an article which appeared in American Magazine of Art.
Prellwitz died on August 19 in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Examples of her work can be found at the National Academy of Design in New York and elsewhere. In 1995, the Museums of Stony Brook, New York organized a major exhibition focusing on Edith and Henry Prellwitz and their association with the Peconic art colony.
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