Artist Anna Richards Brewster (1870–1952) and Mayflower descendant and scholar William Tenney Brewster (1869–1961) shared nearly half a century shaped by art, education, travel, family, and an enduring respect for one another’s work.

Anna was already an accomplished artist long before their marriage in 1905. The daughter of noted American landscape and marine painter William Trost Richards and poet and author Anna Matlack Richards, she began drawing and painting at an early age under her father’s guidance.

Remarkably, Anna first exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York when she was just fourteen years old. Among her early works was The Wild Horses of the Sea, a painting of waves reflecting the influence of her father’s celebrated marine subjects. (Hawthorne Fine Art)

Her achievements continued quickly. In 1890, while still only about twenty years old, Anna won the National Academy of Design’s prestigious Norman W. Dodge Prize for An Interlude to Chopin. The Scarsdale Historical Society describes the award as being given for the best picture painted in the United States by a woman and notes that the prizewinning painting is now lost. (Scarsdale Historical Society)

Anna went on to study at the Cowles Art School in Boston and the Art Students League in New York, as well as with William Merritt Chase and John La Farge. She also studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and spent years working professionally in England. Her paintings were exhibited not only at the National Academy of Design but also at London’s Royal Academy of Arts and other major exhibitions at a time when professional opportunities for women artists remained limited. (Hawthorne Fine Art)

William built a distinguished academic career of his own. A Harvard graduate and longtime professor of English at Barnard and Columbia, he also served as acting dean of Barnard and later as provost. He was a direct descendant of Elder William Brewster, the religious leader who traveled aboard the Mayflower in 1620.

What makes Anna and William’s story especially compelling, however, is the way their individual careers became part of a shared life.

Painting the Places They Encountered

Travel became an important part of Anna’s artistic life. Anna and William traveled widely, including during William’s academic sabbaticals, and Anna continually recorded the places they encountered through paintings and sketches.

The Scarsdale Historical Society describes an artist who worked prolifically from life, creating thousands of sketches over a career of more than sixty years and frequently using these immediate observations as the foundation for more developed paintings. (Scarsdale Historical Society)

Among the works now held by the Mayflower Descendants Museum is Anna’s 1926 painting of Biskra, Algeria, reflecting this important international dimension of her work.

Displayed with the painting is a volume from A Book of Sketches by Anna Richards Brewster, part of the four-volume memorial series William later edited and published after her death.

Placed together, the painting and book allow two moments in the same artistic life to be seen at once: Anna recording the world as she experienced it, and William later working to ensure that those records would not disappear.

Their Son, Herbert

Anna and William’s life together was also marked by profound personal loss.

Their only child, Herbert Richards Brewster, died of pneumonia in 1910 at just four years old, shortly before the family moved into the Scarsdale home they had built. (Scarsdale Historical Society)

The Mayflower Descendants Museum’s holdings preserve unusually personal traces of Herbert within his parents’ story.

The collection includes a painted sketch of Herbert by Anna, preserving the way his mother saw and recorded her young son through her own art. The Museum’s copy of A Book of Sketches also contains a photograph of Herbert, placing his image within the volumes William later assembled in memory of Anna.

Seen together, these objects create a deeply personal family record: a child remembered through his mother’s hand, and mother and child remembered through the book her husband created after she was gone.

“Published in Her Memory”

After Anna died in 1952, William became one of the most important stewards of her artistic legacy.

He edited the four-volume A Book of Sketches by Anna Richards Brewster and also donated a substantial collection of her paintings and oil studies to the Scarsdale Library. (Scarsdale Historical Society)

The title page of the Museum’s volume carries a simple but powerful statement:

“Published in her Memory by William Tenney Brewster.”

Those words transform the book into more than a collection of reproductions. It is also a memorial created by one person for another.

William had watched Anna sketch and paint throughout their life together. After her death, he gathered that work, organized it, published it, and helped place examples of her art where they could continue to be seen and studied.

The Museum’s Biskra painting and memorial volume therefore tell a story larger than either object alone.

One preserves Anna’s act of looking and creating.

The other preserves William’s act of remembering.

Together with the images of Herbert, they document an accomplished artist whose professional career began when she was still a teenager, an intellectual and marital partnership spanning decades, a family touched by profound loss, and a husband’s determination that the work of the woman he loved would survive beyond her lifetime.

The Mayflower Descendants Museum will explore Anna Richards Brewster, William Tenney Brewster, Herbert Brewster, their travels, Anna’s artistic career, and William’s memorial volumes in greater depth through future social-media features.

Holdings of the Mayflower Descendants Museum.

Sources & Further Reading

Scarsdale Historical Society — Anna Richards Brewster
Documents Anna’s early artistic success, her Norman W. Dodge Prize for An Interlude to Chopin, her career, marriage to William, travels, the death of Herbert, and William’s preservation of her work after her death. (Scarsdale Historical Society)
Anna Richards Brewster — Scarsdale Historical Society

Hawthorne Fine Art — Anna Mary Richards Brewster and William Trost Richards
Documents Anna’s exhibition at the National Academy of Design at age fourteen, identifies The Wild Horses of the Sea as one of her early works, and discusses her artistic training and exhibition history. (Hawthorne Fine Art)
Daughter and Father: Anna Mary Richards Brewster and William Trost Richards

Smithsonian Archives of American Art — Anna Richards Brewster Papers
Archival collection preserving correspondence, photographs, writings, family material, and documentation relating to Anna’s life and artistic career.
Anna Richards Brewster Papers

William Vareika Fine Arts — Anna Richards Brewster
Biographical overview of Anna’s professional training, National Academy exhibition history, Dodge Prize, European studies, and career. (William Vareika Fine Arts LTD)
Anna Richards Brewster

Barnard College Archives — William Tenney Brewster
Archival documentation concerning William’s academic and administrative career at Barnard College.
William Tenney Brewster — Barnard Archives

Library of Congress — The Brewster Genealogy, 1566–1907
Published genealogy documenting descendants of Elder William Brewster of the Mayflower.
The Brewster Genealogy