Rachel Hartley
American (1884-1955)
Born into a family of artists in New York City in 1884, Rachel Hartley was the daughter of sculptor Jonathon Scott Hartley and granddaughter of George Inness. She studied at the Art Students League of NY and in Paris. In 1916, she was invited to accompany her botanist brother on the first William Beebe expedition to South America as the official artist on the expedition organized by the American Museum of Natural History. The team spent six months at the Tropical Research Station of the New York Zoological Society in British Guiana. She later became a teacher at the Art Students League. She was a member of the American Federation of Arts and the Pen and Brush Club and exhibited at the MacBeth Gallery in New York. Hartley also was a founder of the Clearwater Museum in Florida. She knew John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler and Childe Hassam. She was known for her urban genre, social realist street scenes and cityscapes.
