Scope and Contents
Dates
- 1881-1981
Creator
Conditions Governing Access
Conditions Governing Use
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Arrangement
Extent
15.5 Linear Feet ((43 boxes) + 1 art)
Language of Materials
English
Catalog Record
A record for this collection is available in Orbis, the Yale University Library catalog
Persistent URL
Overview
Mary Foote (1872-1968)
Mary Hubbard Foote was born on November 25, 1872, in Guilford, Connecticut, to Christopher Spencer Foote (1837-1880), a farmer, and Hannah Jane Hubbard Foote (1840-1885). Her siblings included Robert Elliott Foote (1866-1916), a musician; Harry Ward Foote (1875-1942), a chemist and member of the faculty at Yale; and Margaret Spencer Foote Hawley (1880-1963), a painter of miniature portraits. Following the death of their parents, the younger children were raised by various relatives, including their aunt Elizabeth Foote Jenkins and her husband Edward Hopkins Jenkins, a chemist at and later director of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, and Joseph Roswell Hawley (widower of their aunt Harriet Ward Foote Hawley), former governor of Connecticut, a United States Senator, and owner of the Hartford Courant. While living with the Hawley family, Mary Foote became close friends with the daughters of Samuel Clemens, and graduated from Hartford Public High School.
Foote entered the Yale School of Art in 1890; she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1906. She was the inaugural recipient of both the Alice Kimball English Prize in 1894 and the William Wirt Winchester Prize in 1897, which generously funded several years of study in Paris. There, she studied initially at the Académie Colarossi and shared a studio with Ellen Emmet (later Ellen Emmet Rand) and Emmet's sister and cousins. She soon joined the Emmets as a student of the American artist Frederick MacMonnies, in Paris and Giverny. Inclusion in MacMonnies's circle introduced Foote to Janet Scudder, James McNeill Whistler, and John Singer Sargent (who painted her in "The Sketchers," 1914). In 1901, Foote began a successful career as a professional portraitist in New York City, where she had her own studio in Washington Square, although she continued to travel. Her commissions included socially and politically prominent figures, artists, and intellectuals. Among Foote's closest friends dating from this phase of her life were the theatre designer Robert Edmond Jones and patron of the arts Mabel Dodge Luhan.
In the 1920s Foote sought treatment with American psychoanalyst Smith Ely Jelliffe. While traveling in China in 1926-1927, she wrote to Carl Gustav Jung at the recommendation of Robert Edmond Jones; when Jung agreed to see her, she went directly to Switzerland. Intending to stay for six months, she made Zurich her home for the next thirty years. As part of her treatment with Jung, she stopped painting and put the contents of her New York studio into storage. Foote devoted herself to Jung as his patient, his student, and his amanuensis, transcribing notes from his seminars and printing them on a Mulitgraph machine for dissemination to participants and other interested subscribers. As one of a number of women in Jung’s circle at Küsnacht, Foote was not the first or the only one to serve in this secretarial and editorial capacity, but her zeal for the task and her longevity in it made her a particularly effective agent in the spread of Jung’s ideas.
She returned from Switzerland in 1958, and died West Hartford on January 28, 1968.
Processing Information
This collection received a basic level of processing, including rehousing and minimal organization, in 2013. Prior to 2013, Foote's papers were unprocessed and maintained as two separate collections, one focused on her work with Jung and the other on her painting career and family, although its later accessions also contained Jung material. The papers were reunited during processing in 2013.
The collection is comprised of material formerly classed as: Uncat MS Vault Foote, Za Foote, Uncat Za Foote, Uncat Za MS 52, and Uncat Za MS 72. Various acquisitions associated with the collection have not been merged and organized as a whole. Each acquisition is described separately in the contents list below, according to month and year of acquisition Information included in the Description of Papers note and Collection Contents section is drawn from an initial survey of the contents. Folder titles appearing in the contents list below are often based on those provided by the creator or previous custodian. Titles have not been verified against the contents of the folders in all cases. Otherwise, folder titles are supplied by staff during basic processing. This finding aid may be updated periodically to account for new acquisitions to the collection and/or revisions in arrangement and description.
- Artists
- Artists, American -- 19th century -- Archives
- Artists, American -- 20th century -- Archives
- De Glehn, Jane Emmet, 1873-1961
- Editors
- Emmet family
- Emmet, Leslie, 1877-
- Emmet, Lydia Field, 1866-1952
- Foote, Edward J.
- Foote, Mary, 1872-1968
- Jones, Robert Edmond, 1887-1954
- Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav), 1875-1961
- Jungian psychology
- Luhan, Mabel Dodge, 1879-1962
- MacMonnies, Frederick William, 1863-1937
- Oil paintings (visual works)
- Photographic prints
- Portrait painters -- France -- 20th Century
- Portrait painters -- United States -- 20th Century
- Psychoanalysis
- Rand, Ellen Emmet, 1875-1941
- Scudder, Janet, 1873-
- Sherwood, Rosina Emmet, 1854-1948
- Women artists -- France -- 19th century
- Women artists -- France -- 20th Century
- Women artists -- United States -- 19th century
- Women artists -- United States -- 20th Century
- Women editors -- Austria
Creator
- Title
- Guide to the Mary Foote Papers
- Author
- by Beinecke staff
- Date
- 2013
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description note
- Finding aid written in English.
Part of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Repository
Location
121 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 06511
Opening Hours
Access Information
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