Olive Parker Black (1868-1948)

Olive Parker Black was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1868. She attended the School of Painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, studying with Otto Grundmann and Frank Crowninshield, and went to New York sometime in the 1890s to train with William Merritt Chase and Edwin Blashfield. Her most influential teacher, however, was Hugh Bolton Jones at the Art Students League, from whom she absorbed a love of the subtle harmonious tones and textures of the Barbizon painters. 

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Black was one of the early members of the Boston Art Students Association (later renamed the Copley Society), and also joined the National Association of Women Artists and the American Artists Professional League, among other organizations.  Around 1910, she moved permanently from her home on Avon Street in Cambridge to New York City. She exhibited her work at the National Academy of Design, the Society of American Artists, the Boston Art Club, the Art Club of Philadelphia and the Carnegie Institute. 

References: Falk, Who Was Who in American Art, 1999; Obit., New York Times (July 2, 1948); Art by American Women, Selections from the Collection of Louise and Alan Sellars (Gainesville, GA: Brenau College, 1991); Vose Galleries Artists Files.