TidesNet—Online Collections Entry Detail

DescriptionA large watercolor titled “Passamaquoddy Buildings” completed in about 1920 and is the work of American artist, Nellie Augusta Knopf. Born in Chicago in 1875, Knopf graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1900, studying under John Vanderpoel and Frederick Free. She immediately afterwards began teaching at Illinois State Woman's College (later MacMurray College) where she remained for 43 years. She eventually became head of the college’s art department. Short of stature and very nearly deaf, she successfully made her way in a male-dominated art world painting widely and exhibiting regularly. Knopt spent the summers between 1910-1917 studying landscape painting with artist, Charles Woodbury, in the famed art colony of Ogunquit on the southernmost coast of Maine. It is during this time that she first visited the eastern coast of Maine where she completed a number of oil and watercolor paintings as well as woodcuts over the next several years. “Passamaquoddy Buildings” portrays the jam packed jumble of buildings that made up the area’s industrial waterfronts dominated by the sardine industry that was then at its height. The Tides Institute has several other works done by Knopf of this area during this time as well as a collection of her sketchbooks that includes a number of area scenes. By the early 1920's, Knopf also discovered the Rocky Mountains and she spent many years painting this region. She died at the age of 86 in 1962. Artist: Nellie Knopf Medium: Watercolor Classification: Watercolors Circa: 1930 Old Accession Number: 51