Biography:

Born, raised and educated in Philadelphia, Beatrice Fenton (1836-1984) became a celebrated sculptor whose works of art gained nationwide recognition. Fenton was one of three children of Thomas Hanover Fenton (1856-1929) and Lizzie Spear Remak (b. 1857). Her father was one of the city’s leading ophthalmologists and an enthusiastic art patron. Around the time she began her studies in 1903 at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, Fenton met the painter Thomas Eakins, an acquaintance of her paternal great aunt. The renowned painter advised the young student “to sculpt in clay in order to overcome flatness in drawings.” In 1904 Eakins painted Fenton’s portrait, entitled The Coral Necklace.  From 1904 to 1908, Fenton continued her studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where she won two scholarships that allowed her to study to Europe. Following her travels, she set up a studio in Philadelphia where she created a number of celebrated works of art, including Seaweed Fountain (circa 1920), Narcissus (1922), and Pan with Sundial (1938). Fenton exhibited widely, winning honors and awards in shows, including the Pan-Pacific Exposition of San Francisco, California (1915), the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia (1926), the World’s Fair in New York City (1939). She exhibited at a number of museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Academy of Design, New York City, and in 1976 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  From 1942 to 1953, Fenton taught at Moore College of Art and later at St. John’s Night School for Adults, both in Philadelphia. Fenton died in Germantown, an area just on the outskirts of the city’s center. She was five months shy of her ninety-seventh birthday.