Elizabeth Taylor (painter)

Elizabeth Taylor (born January 8, 1856 in Columbus , Ohio , † March 1932 in Wake Robin, Vermont , USA ) was an American painter , botanist , journalist and globetrotter . She is particularly remembered in the Faroe Islands , where she spent a total of ten years and is called Mistela ( Miss Taylor ).

Life

Elizabeth Taylor, youngest of five daughters of the consul James Wickes Taylor (1819-1893), grew up in Saint Paul (Minnesota) and studied painting at the Art Students League of New York and in Paris at the Académie Colarossi and the Académie Julian .

In the 1880s and 1890s she toured the Northwest Territories of Canada and Alaska on the Nipigon River and the Mackenzie River, and in 1892 she crossed the Arctic Circle . The report of her 3700 km long journey appeared in 1894 with her own drawings in Outing magazine under the title A Woman Explorer in the Mackenzie Delta . As an autodidact , she collected plants and animals for museum collections. B. a dedication name for the variety Arenaria lateriflora L, var. Taylorae . This was followed by trips to England, where she lived for a while, Scotland , France , Iceland , Norway , Denmark , Italy and Montenegro .

She reported on her travels in extensive correspondence, her articles appeared and others. a. in the American entertainment magazines Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly , Atlantic Monthly and Forest and Stream , contributions that she could not put into book form herself during her lifetime. Her nephew James Taylor Dunn only published it posthumously in 1979 as The Far Islands and other cold places. Travel essays of a Victorian lady , which won a 1998 Minnesota Book Awards .

Her estate is kept in the Minnesota Historical Society , where 1853 was also given as the year of birth.

“Mistela” and the Faroe Islands

Elizabeth Taylor visited the Faroe Islands five times between 1895 and 1919. Her two longest stays lasted five years each: 1900 to 1905 and 1914 to 1919. The second long stay was longer than intended because of the First World War , as there was no possibility for her to extend her passport by post and no captain could be found who wanted to take her to America.

She lived on Mykines , Viðareiði , Eiði and in Miðvágur , among others .

On Viðareiði she made friends with the pastor's wife Flora Heilmann (1872–1943), the first known painter on the Faroe Islands. Together they had a not insignificant influence on the emerging Faroese visual arts . It was very likely here that Jógvan Waagstein got his artistic impulses.

In Miðvágur, Mistela lived in the house of Hans Kristoffer á Ryggi , the horticultural pioneer of the Faroe Islands, whose flower, wood and tree cultures impressed her greatly. Here she also taught the later scientific author Mikkjal á Ryggi (1879–1956) to draw. He then illustrated his books on Faroese nature himself.

She gained the most significant influence on Eiði when she lived in Niels Kruses (1871-1953) parents' house . He was the Faroe Islands' first landscape painter and Mistela's pupil.

Works

• A Woman Explorer in the Mackenzie Delta. In: Outing. An illustrated monthly magazine of sport, travel and recreation. The Outing Company, New York / London. Volume XXV, 1894/1895, pp. 44-55, 120-132, 229-235, 304-311. ( archive.org ).
• Elizabeth and the Far Islands. Ten years on the Faroes , Ed. James Taylor Dunn, foreword by John F. West . Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota, self-published, 1979 (manuscript in the National Library of the Faroe Islands , 233 pages, images).
• The Far Islands and other cold places. Travel essays of a Victorian lady , Ed. James Taylor Dunn. St. Paul, Pogo Press, Minnesota 1997, ISBN 1-880654-11-3 (305 pages, images; extended edition of the manuscript, article on the Faroe Islands on pp. 128-295).
• Caught in the storm on Stóra Dimun. In: TJALDUR . (Bulletin of the German-Faroese Circle of Friends ). 20/1998, pp. 40-47.
• Hans Kristoffer's garden (translation: Norbert B. Vogt). In: TJALDUR. 21/1998, pp. 49-58.

literature

• Barbara E. Kelcey: Alone in Silence: European Women in the Canadian North before World War II. McGill-Queen's University Press 2001, ISBN 0-7735-2197-6 , pp. 57-64. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
• Bárður Jákupsson : Færøernes Billedkunst . Atlantia 2000, ISBN 87-91052-00-9 (Danish)
• Barbara Sjoholm: Halibut Woman , in: Faith Conlon, Ingrid Emerick, Christina Henry de Tessan: A Woman Alone: ​​Travel Tales from Around the Globe , Seal Press, 2001, ISBN 1-58005-059-X , pp. 27-42. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
• Óli Egilstrøð: Elisabeth Taylor: fødd í Columbus, Ohio, 1856 - Deyð í Vermont 1932. In: Varðin . Tórshavn, Volume 50, 1983, Issue 1/2, pp. 23-41. ISSN  0902-4638 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Barbara Sjoholm: Halibut Woman
2. ^ Charles Henry Gilbert : Notes on fishes from the basin of the Mackenzie River in British North America. In: US Fish Commission Bulletin , 14, 1894 (1895), pp. 23-25. (Introduction: "The following notes are based upon a small collection of fishes from the Mackenzie River, British America , recently presented by Miss Elizabeth Taylor to the Museum of the Leland Stanford Junior University.") ( Lib.noaa.gov ( Memento des Originals from January 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. ) Retrieved on January 17, 2014 (English). 
3. ^ Arthur G. Butler , WF Kirby : List of insects collected by Miss Elizabeth Taylor in Western North America in the summer of 1892. In: Annals and Magazine of Natural History . London. Volume 12, Series 6, 1893, pp. 11-21. ( Digitized Biodiversity Heritage Library ). Retrieved January 18, 2014.
4. ↑ Arenaria lateriflora L, var. Taylorae in: Harold St. John: Arenaria lateriflora and its varieties in North America: In: Rhodora. New England Botanical Club, Volume 19, No. 228, 1917, p. 262. ( JSTOR 23299104 ). Retrieved January 17, 2014.
5. ^ Winner of the Minnesota Book Awards . Retrieved January 17, 2014.
6. ↑ James Taylor Dunn and Family . Retrieved January 17, 2014.
7. ↑ Jóan Pauli Joensen: Pilot Whaling in the Faroe Islands: History, Ethnography, Symbol , Faroe University Press, 2009, ISBN 99918-65-25-X , pp. 40 f.