In Bloom:
The Flower Paintings of
Margaret French Cresson (1889-1973)

Margaret French Cresson was the only child of Mary Adams French and Daniel Chester French, sculptor of the iconic statue of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. She grew up spending summers in Stockbridge, reading in the Chesterwood garden, wandering the bucolic grounds, and watching her father work in his sculpture studio. As a young adult, she was at the center of the Stockbridge social scene, hosting dinners and parties in the Chesterwood studio.

By 1912 she was taking classes at the New York School of Applied Design for Women, where she learned the fundamentals of drawing, color theory, and composition, skills she would return to later in life when she took up painting for relaxation. But first, she tried her hand at sculpture with lessons from her father. In September 1920, she sent The Girl with the Curls to the Stockbridge Art Exhibition where it garnered rave reviews.

She worked side-by-side with her father at Chesterwood and also studied sculpture with Abastenia St. Leger Eberle in New York. She soon became known for her sensitively rendered portraits of family, friends, and notable subjects such as President James Monroe and the explorer Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd. Grand Central Art Galleries in New York gave her a solo show in 1930, and her work was included in exhibitions in Albany, Pittsfield, and Stockbridge.

Daniel Chester French was an accomplished painter and in his leisure time created beautiful portraits of models, family, and friends in pastel and oil. Margaret French Cresson preferred to depict flowers, still lives, and the accoutrements of a sculptor’s studio. Many of her paintings feature objects that remain in Chesterwood’s collection.

Online exhibition created by Dana Pilson, Curatorial Researcher and Collections Coordinator