Emma Jane Cady

Emma Jane Cady (1854–1933) was an American painter known for her theorem paintings.

Cady was a indigenous of East Chatham, New York, the oldest of three kids of farmer Norman J. Cady. Her family was initially from Connecticut, but migrated to Columbia County in the center of the eighteenth century. She was remembered by neighbors and relations members as beautiful, strong-willed, and active; none remembered her artistic endeavors. Census records present her movement as "housework". Cady remained unmarried throughout her life. After the deaths of her parents she moved in past a nephew; around 1920 she moved again, to Grass Lake, Michigan, where she lived taking into account her sister and sister's relations until her death.

Cady's play a part is unusual, as theorem painting was long with its popularity once she began full of life the art. Her action was discovered in the 1930s by folk art collectors J. Stuart Halladay and Herrell George Thomas, who assumed that she was substitute person of the similar name who lived in New Lebanon, New York not far off from 1820, when theorem painting was at its most popular. Research performed in 1978 by Ruth Piwonka and Roderick H. Blackburn revealed her authentic identity.

Four watercolors and one oil upon canvas by the performer are known; two of the former are still-life depictions of glass compotes, while the supplementary two are images of doves sitting on a branch. One of these, produced for her brother and sister-in-law upon the birth of their eldest son in 1890, is her on your own signed and antiquated work. Cady was evidently a master of the theorem technique; besides using both transparent and opaque watercolor paints, she applied mica flecks to her depictions of glass and used a textured cloth to press forward powder beyond her stencils, a technique known as "pouncing". Her works are considered in the midst of the finest examples of theorem painting known. She is one of the few theorem artists known to have signed her work.

One of Cady's still-life paintings, Fruit in Glass Compote of c. 1895, is in the buildup of the American Folk Art Museum, to which it was donated by Ralph Esmerian. A nearly identical piece, dated c. 1890, is owned by the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum.