Emma Fordyce MacRae

Female American Artist Emma Fordyce MacRae Floral Still Life Painting

Philadelphia Ten Woman Artist, Emma Fordyce Macrae grew up in New York City where she attended the Art Students League (1911-13) and (1915-18). She had studios in New York City and Gloucester, Massachusetts where she summered. In 1937 she began exhibiting with the Philadelphia Ten Women Painters. She was also the only Philadelphia Ten member to attain full membership in the National Academy of Design in New York. She rarely sold her work due to her wealth and in 1983 Richard York Gallery held an exhibit of 30 of her works. Her paintings combine floral arrangements with a patterned, often figural, background in a fresco style that she developed after visiting the Roman wall paintings at Pompeii and Herculaneum. She never varnished her work as to maintain the frescoed appearance.