Ellen Spooner Gladding Young (1882-1962)

Ellen Spooner Gladding was born in Warren, Rhode Island, a descendant of several Rhode Island militiamen and Moses Tyler, the representative of Barrington, RI at the General Assembly of 1776-77. She graduated with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1905 and received a Post-Graduate Scholarship for study in the Department of Drawing and Painting in 1906. While at RISD Gladding painted figure studies of the world-famous model, Antonio Corsi, who had posed for many of the celebrated artists of that era in America and Europe. Gladding taught at RISD and at the Lincoln School in Providence. In 1908 she married John Albion Young, a physician from Massachusetts, and Mayflower descendant. The couple lived at 253 Broadway in Newport, RI and had four children, one of whom, Marjorie Young Burgess Wolff (1912-2005), was a pioneer woman designer of boats and oil drilling rigs. Ellen Spooner Gladding Young was a member of and served on the board of the William Ellery Chapter of the DAR. She was also an active member of: the Art Association of Newport; the Preservation Society of Newport County; the Civic League; the Newport Current Topics Club; the Newport Hospital Women’s Auxiliary and St. Paul’s Methodist Church. The artist died in Newport, Rhode Island and is buried at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Portsmouth, RI.