Eda Nemoede Casterton
| Eda Nemoede Casterton | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Eda Nemoede April 14, 1877 Brillion, Wisconsin |
| Died | November 15, 1969 (aged 92) Palos Verdes Estates, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | School of the Art Institute of Chicago |
| Known for | Painting |
Eda Nemoede Casterton (April 14, 1877 – November 15, 1969) was an American painter known specifically for her portrait miniatures in watercolor, pastels and oil. She exhibited works at the Paris Salon and the San Francisco Panama–Pacific International Exposition of 1915, among others. Her works are at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Brooklyn Museum.
Eda Wilhelmina Nemoede was born in Brillion, Wisconsin on April 14, 1877 to Edward Carl Ludwig Nemoede, a harnessmaker, and Maria Georgina Bastian of German ancestry. They had 11 children, eight of whom reached adulthood. Her siblings were Bertha, 16 years her senior; Agnes; Rudolph; Anna; Hattie; Herman; and Alma Caroline.
Against the wishes of her teacher and family, she painted on the walls of her schoolhouse as a young girl. She wanted to become an artist. According to her parents wishes, she studied to become a stenographer and then worked for attorney Peter Martineau as a secretary. Following the death of her father March 6, 1895 in Oconto, Wisconsin, Casterton lived in Chicago with her mother and her sisters Hattie and Alma Caroline and worked as a stenographer.
Nemoede studied at the Minnesota or Minneapolis School of Fine Arts. When she worked as a stenographer, she spent her lunch hours at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied with Virginia Richmond Reynolds, considered the most accomplished miniature American painter of the time. Of painting miniatures, Casterton said that they were "small paintings painted in a big way."
After she began working as an artist, she took more classes and completed commissioned works of art with her teacher. In France, Casterton studied with Henry Salem Hubbell and exhibited her works at the Paris Salon, where she received an honorable mention in 1905.
She began by painting watercolor on thin sheets of ivory, like the portraits Miss Goss and Little Girl. An article in the Chicago Chronicle, dated June 21, 1903, stated, "Eda Nemoede bids fair to become one of the greatest miniature painters of America and those who have seen her work praise it unstintingly." Her work was described, "Each is a well-realized, strongly modeled, carefully detailed portrait. They were praised for their poetic evocation of mood as well as fidelity to physical likeness. The skin tones are clear and delicate" in the article When Small is Big.
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