Elisabeth Chant

Elisabeth Augusta Chant (March 10, 1865 – September 21, 1947) was an American painter and teacher, noted especially for her landscapes.

Born in Yeovil, Somerset, Chant was the daughter of James Chant, a merchant captain involved in the Asian spice trade, and Elizabeth Rowe Wills; she was one of nine children. She claimed that before she was seven she had sailed the world as one of her father's passengers. With her associates she immigrated to the United States in 1873, settling in Hawley, Minnesota, with numerous other Yeovil residents; upon her mother's death, her father moved the relatives to Minneapolis and opened a market. She in the future displayed a taste for art, but was encouraged to point of view her talents elsewhere, so she enrolled in the Training School for Nurses at Northwestern Hospital for Women and Children and graduated in 1886. She continued taking art lessons, studying past Douglas Volk amongst 1890 and 1893 and receiving instructions in the evenings from Burt Harwood. The outbreak of the Spanish–American War in 1898 wise saying her transferred by the American Red Cross to the American South, where she worked in Savannah and Augusta, Georgia. She was discharged in 1899 and returned to Minneapolis, becoming active once the Handicraft Guild and the Minneapolis Art League and creating murals and decorative paintings as competently as pottery and prints. During a two-year sojourn in England beginning in 1901 she traced her family's connection to King Arthur and his court, with the result that much of her feign became focused on medieval legends. The tour after that provided fodder for a series of feature articles for the Minneapolis Journal. A decade superior she moved to Springfield, Massachusetts for work, remaining for six years at a answer that specialized in various interior fittings and furnishings.

Chant long had a reputation as an eccentric – in highly developed years she dressed in an outré manner and claimed to chat to "spirits" – and in July 1917 concerns very nearly her well-being led members of her associates to have her arrested and effective to the Minnesota Sanitarium. Later in the year she was transferred to the Rochester Hospital in Rochester, where she underwent treatment for manic depression, a condition which may have been exacerbated by the deaths of several family members and a close friend. On her pardon in 1920 she began a vacation to China, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, all of which she had visited in childhood; upon her recompense to the United States she arranged in Wilmington, North Carolina, forswearing nearly all ties considering her family. In Wilmington Chant first attempted to verify an art colony; when prevented by limited finances and destitute health, she turned her attention otherwise to supporting the local artistic community. In 1923 she traditional the Wilmington Art League, which higher led to the start of the Wilmington Art Association. She was also lively in promoting the start of the Wilmington Museum of Art, which opened in 1938 and which was the forerunner of the town's current art museum. She taught design, painting, and batik, both in her own studio and at the museum; pupils included Claude Howell, Henry Jay MacMillan, Helen MacMillan Lane, Hester Donnelly, and Joe Nesbitt. She encouraged her pupils to see to the wider world for influence; her own work was informed by the Arts and Crafts Movement, the performance of the Pre-Raphaelites, and the art of William Morris.

Chant died in Wilmington and is buried there in Oakdale Cemetery.