ELEANOR RICHARDS PRICE

Eleanor French Richards Price, one of eight children of the renowned American landscape and marine artist William Trost Richards, was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Anna Matlack Richards, was a writer and poet. In 1882 she married William Farmer Price of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a manufacturer and well-known philatelist. They lived for a time in Newark, New Jersey before settling in Newport in 1900 at the Richards’ family’s long-time summer residence at 7 Arnold Avenue. Price was an active charter member of the Newport Art Association and taught classes there. Price’s daughter, Edith Ballinger Price, a writer and illustrator, lived in the family home throughout much of her life. Eleanor and her sister, artist Anna Richards Brewster, grew up sketching and painting alongside William Trost Richards in Newport and Jamestown, and among the artists of the Matunuck community, where their uncle Charles Matlack had a summer home. Among the artists painting at Matunuck were Susan and Philip Hale, Carla Atkinson and Frank Convers Mathewson. Both Richards sisters and their husbands built summer cottages on land purchased for them by their father overlooking Lily Pond and Cedar Swamp Pond. Eleanor’s subjects were the views surrounding her home, and her approach was one of faithfulness to nature. Price’s work was exhibited along with Brewster’s at the South County Art Association in Matunuck, and received complimentary reviews. The Newport Art Museum & Art Association has included Price’s work in its exhibition, “Remembering the Ladies: Women and the Art Association of Newport”, June 11 – October 16, 2011. Eleanor Richards Price died in Middletown, Rhode Island at the age of ninety-two. She is buried in the Quaker West Meeting Ground in South Kingstown, Rhode Island.