Artist

Kate Clifton Osgood Holmes

born Ellsworth, ME 1858-died Washington, DC 1925

Biography: Born October 1, 1858, in Ellsworth, Maine. Moved with her family to Washington, D.C., about 1862; remained to 1925. Studied painting with William Merritt Chase at thte Art Students League, New York. Married William Henry Holmes, 1883. Studied art in Europe for a year. Taught decorative arts in local schools and at the Madeira School, McLean, Va. Died April 19, 1925, in Washington, D.C.
Andrew J. Cosentino and Henry H. Glassie The Capital Image: Painters in Washington, 1800–1915 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1983)
: Luce Artist Biography
Kate Clifton Osgood Holmes studied briefly in Europe before returning to Washington, where she was an active member of the art community. She taught design at the Madeira School and exhibited her still-life and genre paintings at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. She married William Henry Holmes, an influential archaeologist and director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum, the precursor to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. (Cosentino and Glassie, The Capital Image: Painters in Washington, 1800-1915, 1983)