Page "Cecilia Beaux" Paragraph 5

Her childhood was a sheltered though generally happy one.

As a teen she already manifested the traits, as she described, of " both a realist and a perfectionist, pursued by an uncompromising passion for carrying through.

" She attended the Misses Lyman School and was just an average student, though she did well in French and Natural History.

However, she was unable to afford the extra fee for art lessons.

At age 16, Beaux began art lessons with a relative, Catharine Ann Drinker, an accomplished artist who had her own studio and a going clientele.

Drinker became Beaux's role model, and she continued lessons with Drinker for a year.

She then studied for two years with the painter Francis Adolf Van der Wielen, who offered lessons in perspective and drawing from casts during the time that the new Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts was under construction.

Given the bias of the Victorian age, female students were denied direct study in anatomy and could not attend drawing classes with live models ( who were often prostitutes ) until a decade later.