Jennie Augusta Brownscombe (1850-1936
Jennie Augusta Brownscombe was born on Dec. 10th 1850 in a log cabin near Honesdale, Pennsylvania. As a young child she drew drawings and while still in elementary school she exhibited paintings at the Wayne Country Fair, where they won ribbons. She moved to New York and trained at Cooper Institute, (which later became Cooper Union School of Design), with Victor Nehlig. She then studied four years at the National Academy of Design with Lemuel E. Wilmarth and was a founder and teacher of the Art Students League. In Paris, she studied with American artist, Henry Mosler. From 1886 to 1895, maintained a studio in Rome where she exhibited with the Water Color Society. She shared a studio with still life painter George Henry Hall in the Catskill Mountains and he was a close-friend and mentor until his death in 1913. Hall was credited with improving her style and color technique. She became very popular with magazines, calendar firms and publishers of prints and her pictures were reproduced as engravings, etchings and photogravures. Her illustrations were published in Harpers Bazaar, Scribner’s Magazine and others. In the 1890′s she became infatuated with early American life and painted her most famous painting, “The First Thanksgiving”, which is now in the Museum of Pilgrim Treasures in Plymouth, Massachusetts. She was a working artist throughout her life despite a stroke at that age of 76. She died in New York City at the age of 85 and was buried beside her parents in Glen Dyberry Cemetery, Honesdale.