Quick Facts
Biography
Laura Woodward (1834 - 1926) was an American painter. She was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2013.
Biography
She was born on March 18, 1834 in Mount Hope in Orange County, New York. She was the oldest out of three children. Her siblings name's were Thomas and Elizabeth. She lived in New York City and painted in the Catskills, the White Mountains, the Adirondacks, the Green Mountains, Maine coast, Massachusetts coast, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. She captured many landscapes in oil on canvas and was a member of the Hudson River School and White Mountain School. Her work was exhibited at the American Art Gallery, National Academy of Design, Boston Art Club, Brooklyn Art Association, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 and in other shows. There was many occasions where she signed her name L. Woodward to avoid being rejected by juried shows or discriminated against by judges, critics, and committees. During her early career as an artist, she became long term colleagues with another artist James D. Smillie.
Woodward began to spend the winters in St. Augustine, Florida in the 1880s and by the end of 1889 she had joined Martin Johnson Heade and the other artists at Henry M. Flagler's Ponce de Leon Hotel. She sought out exotic plants and flowers; painted watercolor sketches and depicted the Seminole Indians in the Everglades. By 1890, her younger sister, Libby, would sometimes travel to Florida with due to her increasingly ill health in the hope that it would extend her life. During her visits, she mastered depicting Florida's scenery and sense of light throughout the day.
In 1920, Woodward became an honorary member of the newly established Palm Beach Art League. Unfortunately, around this same time, her eyesight began to fail and she was unable to continue painting. Although, by this time she was regarded as a respected Florid artist and pioneer artist of Palm Beach. Shortly after, in 1926, she had to move to St. Cloud Florida to be with her caregivers and at the age of 92 passed away. Since the, in 1940 she was remembered through a memorial exhibit by the Palm Beach Art League.