Elsie Lower Pomeroy

Elsie Lower Pomeroy (c. 1882-1971) was an American artist closely associated with the American Scene movement and, in particular, with California Regionalism. In the early twentieth century she worked as a botanical illustrator for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), specializing in fruit watercolors now held in the Pomological Watercolor Collection.

Born in 1882 in New Castle, Pennsylvania, she grew up in Washington, D.C., and graduated from the Corcoran School of Art. By about 1908 she was painting for the USDA, producing more than 280 watercolors of citrus, apples, strawberries and cherimoyas, among other fruits. Unlike many of her colleagues, she continued exhibiting as an artist after leaving government service. In 1911 she married the pomologist Carl Stone Pomeroy, and by 1913 the couple had settled in Riverside, California.

In Riverside she befriended Millard Sheets, Phil Dike and Eliot O'Hara, and painted a series of four watercolors on the citrus industry, which won awards and are now in the permanent collection of the University of California, Riverside. In the mid-1940s she moved to Mill Valley in Marin County. Her subjects ranged from Death Valley and the coast to Spanish missions and San Francisco, and she worked mainly in watercolor and oil.

Although less well known than her male contemporaries, her work illustrates the California painting scene between 1920 and 1950. She died in 1971 in Mill Valley, leaving hundreds of watercolors, oils and drawings.