Susie M. Barstow was the daughter of old-time
New York City tea merchant Samuel Barstow (1805-1884) and Mary Tyler Blossom (1813-1895), whose lineage traces back to one of the original passengers of the
Mayflower. She was born on May 9, 1836. She studied at the
Rutgers Female Institute in New York, the first college for women in New York City, graduating in 1853, and received additional artistic training in Europe. She exhibited at the
National Academy of Design from 1858, the Brooklyn Art Association, and the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts among other venues. At the time, women artists did not have the same opportunities to exhibit their work as male artists did, so her work remained relatively little known until art historians began to reassess women artists of the Hudson River School. Complementing the exhibit, art historian Nancy Siegel published the biography
Susie M. Barstow: Redefining the Hudson River School (2023), which drew on archival sources including letters, diaries and sketchbooks held by her family. Barstow, an early member of the
Appalachian Mountain Club, was an avid hiker who climbed hundreds of mountains in New York and
New England — including all the principal peaks of the
Catskills,
White Mountains, and
Adirondacks — as well as the
Alps and the
Black Forest in Europe. She often went on expeditions along the
Hudson River and in the mountains that combined hiking with sketching and painting. Finding women's dress of the era cumbersome and impractical, Barstow developed a hiking costume that included sturdy boots and shortened skirts paired with trousers (a combination advocated by the
rational dress movement). Barstow never married. Her niece
Susie B. Skelding also became an artist and illustrator, and the two went on sketching expeditions together. Susie M. Barstow is buried at the
Green-Wood Cemetery in the
Brooklyn borough of New York City. ==References. ==