Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer

Joseph W. Byrns, Sr., now on display at the United States Capitol , donated to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where it is on display in the Academy's Maury Hall Hergesheimer was born on January 7, 1873, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to parents Charles P. Hergesheimer and Ellamanda Ritter Hergesheimer. She was encouraged to create art in her childhood. Hergesheimer was the great-great granddaughter of Charles Willson Peale, a Philadelphia artist who named one of his daughters Sophonisba after the Italian artist, Sofonisba Anguissola. Hergesheimer chose to use Sophonisba as her first name. and then went on to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts for four years. She was considered by Chase to be one of his finest students, and spent the summer of 1900 studying at Chase's Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art on Long Island. This allowed her to study abroad in Europe for three years, where she trained at the Académie Colarossi and exhibited at the Paris Salon. ==Career==

As a result of having her work including in a 1905 traveling exhibition organized by the Nashville Art Association, she received a commission in 1907 to paint the portrait of Holland Nimmons McTyeire, the Methodist bishop who convinced Cornelius Vanderbilt to endow Vanderbilt University. She also conducted art classes in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where her circle of friends included fellow artists Frances Fowler, Sarah Peyton, and Wickliffe Covington. ==Death==

Hergesheimer died on June 24, 1943, in Davidson County, Tennessee. ==Awards==

• Gold medal, Appalachian Exposition (1910) • Gold medal, Tennessee State Exposition (1926) ==Major exhibitions==

• American Artists Professional League • Art Institute of Chicago • Corcoran Gallery of Art • National Academy of Design • New Orleans Art Association • Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts • Salons of America • Sesquicentennial Exposition, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1926) • Society of Independent Artists == Colleagues and affiliations ==

• American Artists Professional League • American Federation of Arts • National Arts Club • New Orleans Art Association • Salons of America • Society of Independent Artists • Southern States Art League • Washington, D.C. Watercolor Club ==Collections==

Some of the major collectors of Hergesheimer's work are: • Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York • Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia • Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania • Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, Tennessee • United States Capitol, Washington, D.C. • Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee • Two Red Roses Foundation, Palm Harbor, Florida ==References==