Edward Simmons Biography

Edward Emerson Simmons (1852-1931) was an American Impressionist painter, remembered for his mural work.

His father was a Unitarian minister. He graduated from Harvard College in 1874 and was a pupil of Lefebvre and Boulanger in Paris, where he took a gold medal. In 1894, Simmons was awarded the first commission of the Municipal Art Society, a series of murals - Justice, The Fates, and The Rights of Man - for the interior of the Criminal Courthouse at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan. This court is the criminal branch of the New York Supreme Court (the trial court in New York), where many New Yorkers serve on jury duty. Later, Simmons decorated the Waldorf Astoria New York hotel, the Library of Congress in Washington, and the mural series "Civilization of the Northwest" in the Minnesota State Capitol rotunda in Saint Paul.

In 1914, he travelled with Childe Hassam to view the Arizona desert paintings of the rising California artist Xavier Martinez at his Piedmont studio.

Simmons was a member of the Ten American Painters, who, as a group, seceded from the Society of American Artists. He was also considered a contributor to the style known as the American Renaissance, a movement after the American Civil War that stressed the relationship of architecture, painting, sculpture and interior design.

Simmons published his autobiography in 1922.

In 1996, his painting The Carpenter’s Son, located in the First Unitarian Church in New Bedford, Massachusetts, was yanked from the wall and cut out from its frame. The section depicting Jesus was taken, cut out, and removed, with the rest of the painting left lying on the floor. The lost section was found in 2006 rolled up behind a refrigerator, when it was being removed from the congregation’s kitchen. The painting was then restored and ownership transferred to the Rotch-Jones-Duff House and Garden Museum.