I recently sold a signed miniature of a baby by Elsie Dodge Pattee (Augur) to her grand-daughter, who shared some information on her grandmother. The grand-daughter has Pattee’s autobiography, a large oil that was a Beaux Arts entry, and some late paintings. She says about Pattee:

“I can’t wait to show your miniature to my older sister Alison, who might be the baby in question, but the photo doesn’t look like another miniature we have of her. Alison, b. 1936, is five years older than I am, and is probably one of the last subjects Nana painted. Her retina detached before I was born and she didn’t pick up a brush again for at least twenty years, when another cousin, himself an artist, bought her oils and canvases, saying “Here, paint big!” In the interim, she taught history of art to all the kids in the neighborhood, in Old Lyme where she lived and we summered, and in Ossining NY, where we lived and she wintered. I’ve been through Egyptian, Greek and Roman art several times and have a lifelong love of art in general and those periods in particular. Nana also started to teach me drawing – as she had learned it, starting with charcoal and properly shading an egg – and my greatest regret is that I didn’t do more with her using more vivid colors later in her career. I spent a lot of time with her in the last decade of her life – late ‘60’s, early 70’s – just as I was getting involved in the Women’s Movement. We talked a lot about her life as, essentially, a single, independent, professional woman, which is what I was and am. “Nana, were you involved with the suffragists?” “No, I was too busy working for a living.”

This is a pastel portrait of Elsie done by husband Elmer (E. E. Pattee). He, too was an artist. In fact, I think they met in art school. However, because he ‘wanted to paint the way he wanted to paint,’ and because he had a family to support, he started the Paris American Art Store. It still exists, within walking distance of the Louvre. Attached is the companion self-portrait by Elmer. i’m not sure of the date, but the both look very young, so they were probably done around 1902ish. [see images below]. “

Upon querying if Elsie Pattee was related to John Wood and Edward Dodge, the grand-daughter replied:

“If the families were related there is no genetic connection because my grandmother was adopted; family lore has it from a Chelsea MA housepainter. His wife died, Nana was an infant and he couldn’t care for her, so she was adopted by Emma Harper Dodge and her husband, Mr. Dodge (whose given name I can’t remember. I do remember that he was an alcoholic and he never worked.) Emma was an offshoot of the Harper publishing company, and the family moved to Paris when Elsie was very young because a modest income went much farther in France than in America.”

A biography of Elsie Dodge Pattee is as follows:

Elsie S. Dodge Pattee (1876- c. 1975 ) was one of the leading miniature artists of her era. Born Elsie Stuart Dodge in Chelsea, Massachusetts, she studied at the Academie Julian in Paris, where she most likely met her husband Elmer Ellsworth Pattee, a painter and sculptor, She gave birth to their son, John Robert Pattee, and then apparently the family moved to New York, where she established her career painting landscapes and marine paintings, and specializing in portrait miniatures. Pattee exhibited at the National Academy of Design, the Brooklyn Society of Artists, the Lyme Art Association, the Mystic Art Association, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Panama Pacific Exhibition of 1915, and the Paris Salon. Along with Lucia Fairchild Fuller and Mabel R. Welch, she was one of the three regular instructors at the American School of Miniature Painters for the years 1913 to 1916, and was a member of the American Society of Miniature Painters. She died in Old Lyme, Connecticut in 1975. Her works may be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the  Smithsonian Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, among others.