Forever Seeing New Beauties: The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams, 1857 1907

Revolutionary artist Mary Rogers Williams (1857 1907), baker’s daughter from Hartford, Connecticut, biked and hiked from the Arctic Circle to Naples, exhibited from Paris to Indianapolis, trained at the Art Students League, chafed against art world rules that favored men, wrote thousands of pages about her travels and work, taught at Smith College for nearly two decades, but sadly ended up almost totally obscure. In 2012, her confessional letters and hundreds of her paintings and sketches turned up in storage at a Connecticut family’s home. Her first biography reveals her as feisty, funny, self-deprecating, caustically critical of mainstream art, and observant of everything from soldiers’ epaulettes to colorful produce layered on delivery trucks. She was determined to paint portraits and landscapes in her distinctive style. The book reproduces her unpublished artworks.