Archives of American Art

A Finding Aid to the Lily Emmet Cushing Papers, 1929-1972, in the Archives of American Art

Summary

Collection ID:
AAA.cushlily
Creators:
Cushing, Lily Emmet, 1909-1969
Dates:
1929-1972
Languages:
English
.
Physical Description:
4 Linear feet
Repository:
The papers of painter Lily Emmet Cushing date from 1929 to 1972 and measure 4.0 linear feet. Found within the papers are biographical material; letters from friends including Henri Bernstein, Alfred M. Frankfurter, Katharine Graham, Nancy Kefauver, and Walt Kuhn; personal business records including financial material concerning the Maynard Walker Gallery; notes and writings; art work; printed material; and photographs.

Scope and Content Note

Scope and Content Note
The papers of painter Lily Emmet Cushing date from 1929 to 1972 and measure 4.0 linear feet. Found within the papers are biographical material; letters from friends including Henri Bernstein, Alfred M. Frankfurter, Katharine Graham, Nancy Kefauver, and Walt Kuhn; personal business records including financial material concerning the Maynard Walker Gallery; notes and writings; art work; printed material; and photographs.
Biographical material consists primarily of address books and lists of addresses, but also includes miscellaneous resumés and a certificate of participation in the Art in the Embassies program. signed by Nancy Kefauver.
Scattered letters received by Cushing are primarily from friends including Henri Bernstein, Alfred M. Frankfurter, Katharine Graham, Nancy Kefauver, and Walt Kuhn. There are also letters concerning the Chinese Women's Anti-Aggression League that benefited the charitable and social welfare organizations of the Chinese Navy.
Personal business records include lists of art work and purchasers, price lists, financial and legal documents, and various receipts, including some for art supplies. Papers concerning the Maynard Walker Gallery include letters discussing sales, invoices, and a ledger listing sales of art work by various artists including Lily Cushing Emmet.
Notes and Writings consist of notebooks containing annotations on miscellaneous topics including household items, painting, plants, and recipes. Miscellaneous notes concern art work, fabric, and furnishings. Typescripts by others concern the genealogy of the Clark family.
Art work consists of a schematic drawing, small oil paintings on masonite, and a commercial printing block of a design by Walt Kuhn.
Printed material consists of clippings, exhibition announcements and catalogs, programs, miscellaneous brochures, picture postcards of scenes in the United States, Europe, and Mexico and of Native Americans.
Photographs are of Cushing, her daughters, her third husband Capt. Alston Boyd, friends and colleagues including Mme. Chiang Kai-Shek, various houses, travel scenes, miscellaneous plants, and of art work. There is also a photograph of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Arrangement

Arrangement
The collection is arranged as 7 series:
  • Missing Title
  • Series 1: Biographical Material, 1953-1967 (Box 1; 14 folders)
  • Series 2: Letters, 1929-1972 (Box 1-2, OV 7; 1.4 linear feet)
  • Series 3: Personal Business Records, 1934-1969 (Box 2-3, 6; 0.8 linear feet)
  • Series 4: Notes and Writings, 1955-1969 (Box 3; 23 folders)
  • Series 5: Art Work, circa 1940 (Box 3, 6; 3 folders)
  • Series 6: Printed Material, 1930-1968 (Box 3, 6; 30 folders)
  • Series 7: Photographs, 1940-1968 (Box 3-6; 0.8 linear feet)

Biographical Note

Biographical Note
Lily Cushing (1909-1969) of New York City was primarily known as a painter of landscapes and still lifes of flowers.
Lily Cushing was born on January 13, 1909 in New York City, the third child of Ethel Cochrane and artist Howard Gardiner Cushing. She studied painting in the studio of Alexandre Jacovleff in Paris from 1926-1927, and with Walt Kuhn in New York City in 1929. Cushing's first solo exhibition was at the Arden Gallery in New York in 1930.
In 1929, Cushing married George Crawford Clark Jr. in Newport, Rhode Island. Following her divorce from Clark, she married William Temple Emmet, Jr. in 1932. They had two daughters, Alexandra and Lily. Cushing's second marriage also ended in divorce. In 1953, she married naval officer Alston M. Boyd in New York.
Cushing's work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and in the private collections of Paul Mellon, John Hay Whitney, and Joseph P. Kennedy, among others.
Lily Cushing died on September 21, 1969, in Fishers Island, New York.

Administration

Author
Jean Fitzgerald
Provenance
The Lily Emmet Cushing papers were donated in 1972 by the artist's daughters Alexandra Emmet Schlesinger and Lily Emmet West.
Separated Material
An unrecorded number of exhibition catalogs were removed from the collection and given to the Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery Art Library in 1977.
Processing Information
Portions of the collection were microfilmed separately on reels 963 and 1001; these reels are no longer in circulation. The unmicrofilmed papers and previously microfilmed papers were integrated, processed, and described in a finding aid by Jean Fitzgerald in December 2010.

Using the Collection

Preferred Citation
Lily Emmet Cushing papers, 1929-1972. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Restrictions on Access
Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Terms of Use
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.

Keywords

Keywords table of terms and types.
Keyword Terms Keyword Types
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Occupation Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Landscape painting Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Women artists Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Women painters Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Postcards Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Notebooks Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Photographs Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Typescripts Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Paintings Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy, 1929-1994 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Frankfurter, Alfred M. Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Graham, Katharine, 1917- Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Kefauver, Nancy, 1912-1967 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Bernstein, Henri Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Chiang, May-ling Soong, 1897-2003 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Zhonghua fu nü fan gong kang E lian he hui Corporate Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Kuhn, Walt, 1877-1949 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Maynard Walker Gallery Corporate Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid

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