Kate Freeman Clark
1875–1957 · American painter from Mississippi trained in New York
Kate Freeman Clark (Holly Springs, Mississippi, September 3, 1875 – March 3, 1957) was an American painter who trained in New York and whose work ended up almost entirely in her hometown. Her story is notable because she built a career in the New York art world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and then abruptly left painting behind.
In 1894 she enrolled at the Art Students League in New York, where she studied with John Henry Twachtman and Irving Ramsay Wiles. Wiles introduced her to William Merritt Chase, who taught her still life and plein air painting and remained her mentor until his death in 1916. Watching Chase work in oil led her to abandon watercolor, the medium most women of the era used, and take up oils. Chase chose two of her paintings for his personal collection. She signed her works "Freeman Clark" or "K. Freeman Clark" so that her gender was not immediately obvious.
She began exhibiting at the National Academy of Design in 1905, followed by shows in Pittsburgh, Washington, Philadelphia and New York, along with several one-woman exhibitions. In 1924 she returned to Mississippi and left the art world. The reasons are unknown, though the deaths of Chase and of her relatives in the following years have been suggested as a factor. She bequeathed more than a thousand works and a house to her town, with money for a museum that now bears her name.