Person Page - 3645

Clara Elizabeth Sackett,
Widely-Known WNY Artist
Special to The Buffalo Evening News
Westfield, March 9.—Miss Clara Elizabeth Sackett, 94, an artist who has had paintings exhibited in national art shows in both the United States and abroad, died last Wednesday in a St. Petersburg, Fla., rest home, according to word received here.
     Miss Sackett has been living in St. Petersburg since 1934. She was born in Westfield, and after completing art studies in Buffalo went to Paris where she studied with Delecleuse, Delance, Callot and Amon-jean. Several of her earlier paintings are hanging in the Louvre in Paris. Others are in the Boston Museum.
     Miss Sackett helped found the Guild of Allied Art and was active in the St. Petersburg Art Club. She was also a member of art groups in New York, Boston, California, Paris and Buffalo. She was a member of the Garret Club, Buffalo.
     She was a member of St. Peter's Episcopal Church. There are no known survivors. Burial was in the family lot, Lake View Cemetery, Jamestown.

—The Buffalo News, Buffalo, New York, 9 Mar 1954, p 6

Clara Elizabeth Sackett—Early homes Westfield and Jamestown. Studied: Albany, Boston, New York Students' League, Paris five years; had two portraits in the salons. Next, Buffalo, portraits, exhibiting other cities, especially in New York. During World War put on reconstruction pageant at Wilmington, North Carolina. Plays, pageants, tableaux with Percy and Hazel MacKaye. In 1915 had thirty pastel portraits at San Diego Exposition; one of Mrs. John Rockefeller. In Washington painted Mrs. Oliver Belmont. In charge art department Cambridge Haskell School, 1922. Won other honors, prizes. In 1925 had studio Hotel Astor, where painted portrait first officer killed in Great War, Jeff Feigl. In 1926 sent to Lenox by New York Art Center charge summer exhibition house for their artists. Has New York studio; summers in Nova Scotia, or rarely, Westfield. Miniature exhibits several cities, and New York Miniature Society. In 1913 opened Buffalo Guild Applied Arts; was first president. In 1933 started Guild Applied Art Chautauqua County, with pageant; another in 1934. ("Who's Who, Leading Women of America.")

—William J Doty, editor, The Historic Annals of Southwestern New York (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1940), v 2, p 558

Well Known Buffalo Women
Miss Clara E. Sackett
Imaglne, if you can, a painter of portraits who gives the exact and "speaking" likeness so desired, who yet is a painter of beautiful dreams, a portrayer at the same time of the soul and the flesh.
     If your imagination has gone so far, you will have recognized Miss Clara Sackett, who, from the beginning of her ten years' residence in Buffalo, has taken the initiative as a miniaturist.
     As a "painter in little," she still leads, although many large canvasses attest her versatility as an artist. It is, however, as a miniaturist that Miss Sackett is known in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Western cities, where she has exhibited with the American Society of Miniature Painters, and the American Water Color Artists.
     It was also as an exponent of the art of "painting in little" that Miss Sackett responded to the call of the World's Congress of Women, who specialized to her, the request sent to women who had achieved distinction on any field. Although she had in possession a canvass which had hung in the Paris Salon, Miss Sackett sent to Berlin an ivory portrait the exquisite likeness of a white-haired gentlewoman of Boston—"A Lady of Quality," the artist terms it.
     "Five years at hard labor" in Paris, preceded by two years of study in New York at the Art Students' League, under Chase, Cox and Beckwith taught Miss Sackett to handle her tools so skillfully. But back of the invaluable technical drill there stands a most fortunate inheritance.
     On the one side—a Scotch-Irish ancestry, whose marked characteristics were intrepidity of daring and brilliancy of achievement under difficulties mountain high. On the other side the quaintness of the France which lies outside of Paris, combined with the rich mosaic of that paradise of visions—the heritage of blood throbbing with the priceless garner of Italy's centuries.
     It was her Scotch-Irish grandmother, twice removed, who was the wife of Col. Campbell of the Cherry Valley massacre, and who, being for two years held as hostage by the Indians, dauntlessly lived out her destiny, forcing respect from Indian captors by stoical endurance matching their own; cutting the notch of each memory marker on sticks as the days went by that she might not lose count of time, and finally after gaining the title of "Medicine Woman," in the tribe, being united once more with husband and children.
     With this overflowing wealth of heredity—with the scientific training of French schools—the help of such critics as Benjamin Constat, Callot, Delecluse, Delance, Aman Jean—the inspiration of breathing the same air with Gerome, Bouguereau, Dagnan—Bouveret, with the palettes of Carolus—Duran and Alexander Harrison as aids to color—and over all, the skies of sunny France, the land of the idealist, where reigns a sympathy with and comprehension of the work of the artist to be found nowhere else under the stars—is it remarkable that Miss Sackett's experience should reach into and envelop her pictured faces with that indefinable shadow which belongs to the land of dreams rather than that of earth?
     Herein lies the charm of her portraits. They have all the common properties of the lineaments, but in addition Miss Sackett gives the soul of the sitter as she sees it through the veil of features. This intangibility of illusiveness of the art of soul-painting applied to portraiture brings its own results and Miss Sackett's miniatures are as far removed from the ordinary artistic conception of ivory backgrounds and flesh-toned foregrounds as one could wish them to be.
     Miss Sackett's versatility as an artist is too well known to need more than passing comment. "A Street Corner in San Briac" exhibited in the Paris exhibition in 1895, shows her in an entirely new line which she treats with equal skill.
     In 1893, after one of those battles with heart and mentality which every soul faces sooner or later in this sorrow-stricken world in adjusting its losses, Miss Sackett created Psyche, which brought her the fellowship prize of $50, offered by the Buffalo Society of Artists. The picture was later sold to Mr. Barnsdall of Pittsburg.
     In speaking of the student life in Paris, Miss Sackett said: "It is marvelous, the absolute devotion to art of the students. We could see them every morning from our apartment in the Latin Quarter, going by at daylight carrying the piece of bread upon which they would lunch and dine—some of them absorbed in the one thought to accomplish something really worth while in art."
     In this connection, Miss Sackett told me a litle story which had its faintly humorous side, but which was yet sadder than the grave. She had gone to the Beaux-Arts to see a figure in bronze which more than anything else exemplifies the extent of sacrifice of which the French artist is capable. The story has it that this figure was finished in the clay by a Frenchman during a cold winter's night, and that in order to protect it from freezing he had wound it in his clothing and the covering of the bed. In the morning the figure was found—all unharmed—while beside it lay the frozen body of its creator. Miss Sackett wishing to see this statue, asked the concierge to allow her to see the figure executed by the man who was frozen in saving it. Having been in Paris a comparatively short time, her French was unintelligible to the custodian, who eagerly disclaimed the supposed accusation saying in broken English that no one had been frozen at the Beaux-Arts—that it was very warm and comfortable and that Mademoiselle had certainly been misinformed. At last the artist succeeded in arriving at an understanding and was shown the figure which had cost a life.—"Greater love hath no man than this, that he give his life for his friend." The French men's art was to him that lofty embodiment of friendship, worthy the uttermost—and the uttermost he gave.
     The mantle of her brilliant father, Charles Dewey Sackett, who was a brilliant journalist, has fallen upon his artist daughter, and no better expression of Miss Sackett's experiences of the artist's life in France can be written than her own words tell us.
     Speaking of the universal sympathy of the people toward artists, she says: "Even on the extreme north coast of Brittany where the lover of Nature strays in summer, delighting in the poetry of line and color, the fisher folk stand silent about the easel; though frequently seeing nothing intelligible on the canvas, yet full of deference and encouragement for the would-be-painter.
     "It is an ideal spot for the Bohemian, that land of Pierre Loti's poetical romances; always the sea, and the cross, with women in black gowns and white coifs knitting about it; there they sit and gaze out to sea, where their husbands and sons live and die. The cemeteries contain mostly women's graves.
     "A picture rises before me—it is a starry night late in June. A party of Americans and English are setting sail on the bay, singing college songs to their guitars. At the first silence, applause breaks out on the cliff, where the youth of the town are love-making about the cross. 'Brava! Brava!' they cry, as the bonfire flames up and throws out the figures in relief; they break out tumultously into the wild romantic songs of Brittany. The boat load, now distant, in turn applaud, and hear faintly, "encore, encore"—as they sail far out on the bay; on that water that often seeks the sea, leaving the sands bare."
     Miss Sackett drew a little word picture of a studio class experience which is delightfully realistic.
     "I remember one evening," she said, "the dingy walls were covered with cartoons and rough sketches some by men whose names have long been famous. Fritel, who was critic of the evening, presently came in. He had a dreamy face and a direct gaze that compelled instant deference. One felt the greatness of his ideals and that his life was spent for them.
     "The model had fainted, probably from lack of food, as sometimes happens, and was in charge of some energetic person. So Monsieur Fritel sat quietly waiting, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. When one woman, more daring than the rest, spoke to him timidly, saying she had seen his great painting of 'The Conquerors' at the World's Fair, and that it was much appreciated, he showed his pleasure frankly, speaking to all the class, who moved nearer and surrounded him. He told his idea in the painting, describing his first sketches; how it took him two years to think it out and gather material, and six months to paint it; saying how little the finished work ever comes up to the first conception; expressing resignation and not a little sorrow by the few suggestive words and gestures that the French know so well how to use; answering eager questions from time to time, from here a Dane, there a Russian, German, English. or American pupil. Very few, he said, ever realize their ideals. How few in each age are great.
     "We all remembered his huge canvass of "The Conquerors," a canvass representing a procession of spectral horsemen approaching on a wide thoroughfare that began far back in a dim light. On all sides were the phantom-shapes of those who had perished in struggling to reach their goals. The horsemen bore likeness to Caesar, Napoleon and other leaders of the past.
     "I shall never forget the talk and the whole scene, though it was not an uncommon one. The breathless group In the large bare room, full of easels, the huge lamps above making great arks of light on the stained floor and losing the corners in black shadows. All our hearts were in this simple speech of a truly great man who did not call himself great or good, but who lived up to the best and brightest in his world."
     Among the many unique characters which formed part of the experience of the students, Miss Sackett mentioned Corinne, a model, whose name no one ever knew. This woman, whose figure was analagous, posed for Sara Bernhardt. She came and went and the air of mystery surrounding her was never lessened. When struggling, starving artists fell by the wayside "Corinne" gathered them in and cared for them until they recovered or sold a picture, which is sometimes recovery's equivalent.
     Miss Sackett is just at the present time completing order work. She has one sketch in oil of Miss Florence McCaig, which has been photographed for this page.
     This sketch, executed with great rapidity, is instinct with life and color—a strong contrast to the Romney effects of the small oil portraits of Buffalo women she is completing as order work. These latter portraits shine like gems in the quaint and beautiful settings of Miss Sackett's studio where rare curios are seen everywhere.
     Miss Sackett will go to Seneca Lake in June, where she has several unfulfilled orders for miniatures and small oil portraits. Later, an order list awaits her in Westfield, her former home. Some of these portrait orders come from Warren, Pa., from Elmira and other cities, as well as the home town and Buffalo. The prospect opens, therefore, for a busy summer's work.
     To be an idealist, and at the same time to have that quality of precision which knows the determinate stroke is to be a master.
     Buffalo has not yet seen the best work of Miss Clara Sackett.
     From the persistency that belongs not to humanity but to the region of angels and devils, comes the "big thing," the one great creation of the artist's soul.
     From the heritage of idealism and daring, from years of rich environment and masterly training, fiom the struggle of her soul, will come the "big thing" for Miss Sackett and the achievement will satisfy the most exacting critics.
—Kate Burr.

—The Buffalo Times, Buffalo, New York, 2 Apr 1905, pp 15, 18

Charles Edward Sackett, B.A. 1883
Born December 24, 1861, in Jamestown, N.Y.
Died January 22, 1939, in Los Angeles, Calif.

Father, Charles Dewey Sackett (Allegheny College ex-1845) of Jamestown; editor of the Jamestown Journal; son of Jabez B. and Ann (Dewey) Sackett. Mother, Mary Anna (Dickson) Sackett; daughter of William and Elizabeth (Dickson) Dickson.

Westfield (Ill.) Academy; attended Western Reserve University, 1879–81 (member of Delta Kappa Epsilon). Entered the Yale Class of 1883 at the beginning of Junior year; dissertation appointment Senior year; member of the Class tennis club.

Principal of a Norwalk, Connecticut, school, 1883–84; attended George Washington University Law School, 1885–87; admitted to the Montana bar in 1889; clerk in the Sixth Auditor’s Office, Washington, D.C., 1884–90; post-office inspector in San Francisco, 1890–93; appointed court reporter in Montana in 1892 and served until 1900; moved to Butte, Montana, in 1900 and practiced law from 1900–05; reporter for the District Court, Third Judicial District of Montana, residing in Anaconda, 1905–23; retired in 1923 and thereafter lived in Los Angeles. Compiled the mining laws of Montana (unpublished). Member of the Masonic Order.

Unmarried.

Death due to apoplexy. Buried in Valhalla Cemetery, Burbank, California. Survived by a sister, Miss Clara E. Sackett of St. Petersburg, Florida.

—Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University