Maria Howard Weeden, the daughter of Jane Eliza Brooks Urquhart and
Dr. William Donaldson Weeden, was born in a house (now the Weeden House Museum)
at the corner of Gates and Green Streets in Huntsville, Alabama. She lived
there continuously until her death with the exception of a short time during
the War Between the States when she lived in Tuskegee, Alabama. She is said to
have been frail in body with an almost ethereal daintiness, yet she used her
mannish name all of her life.
An artist and a poet, Howard Weeden received instruction in art from
William Frye, a prominent portrait painter who was widely recognized in the
Tennessee Valley area. Her skills with brush and pen were exhibited through
hand-painted cards for special occasions, elaborate booklets for weddings,
dinner cards, favors for parties, and cards of condolence. As early as 1868,
her stories appeared in The Christian Observer, a Presbyterian
newspaper. Her stories, under the pseudonym "Flake White," continued
to appear in that paper for the next twenty years. Ms. Weeden's love of flowers
was reflected in her collection of paintings of 208 varieties of wildflowers.
In her Book of Roses, she illustrated the many varieties in her mother's
garden.
In 1893, she attended the Columbia Exposition in Chicago and concluded
that her work deserved a wider audience. She had realized that the simplicity
and poignancy which she sought to capture in her work elicited a response
distinctly different from that of her contemporaries. In 1895, seven of her
best portraits were shown in the Berlin gallery of Edward Schulte in a
"Howard Weeden Gala." The exhibit was so successful that Ms. Weeden
received a large number of orders for her work. She later had a showing in
Paris.
She published four books: Shadows on the
Wall (1898), Bandanna Ballads (1899), Songs of the Old South
(1901), and Old Voices (1904). Joel Chandler Harris wrote in the
introduction to Bandanna Ballads, "The art with which the facts are
set forth is so felicitous in its touch, so faithful and so informing, that it
goes deeper than character and individuality; it revives and resurrects the
period; in some mysterious way, it restores the atmosphere and color of the
time. And each portrait stands out as a little masterpiece, harmonious,
powerful, charged with feeling, and illuminated by the imagination that makes
its creations more real than life itself."
Howard Weeden, using her largely self-taught talents with brush and pen,
made a unique contribution to an era in the history of the South, with
faithfulness to fact and with respect and dignity to the individuals
recorded.
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