Ida Waugh Biography

Ida Waugh (1846-1919) was an American illustrator of children's literature who often collaborated with her lifelong companion, Amy Ella Blanchard.

Ida Waugh was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 24th October 1846, the daughter of painter Samuel B. Waugh and his first wife, Sarah Mendenhall, therefore she was a half-sister of painter Frederick Judd Waugh. Her stepmother was Mary Eliza Young Waugh, a miniaturist.

She attended Académie Julian and Académie Delécluse in Paris, studying with Georges Callot, Paul-Louis Delance, and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant. In 1868, she attended the first "Ladies Life Class" at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; in the same class there were Emily Sartain and Catherine Ann Drinker.

Ida Waugh collaborated with her partner, Amy Ella Blanchard, in publishing children's books, Waugh as illustrator and Blanchard as writer. Waugh also published books under her own name.

Other than being a children's book illustrator, Waugh was an award-winning painter. In 1869, she exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts two works, "The Bargain" and a portrait bust of Carl Gaertner.

Her self-portrait and another painting, "Little Cosette" (1870), are in the permanent collection of the Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, both donated by Mrs. John S. Haug in 1961. They were part of the exhibition "Women and Biography" in 2014, including: Elizabeth Shippen Green, Violet Oakley, Edith Emerson, Anne Minich, Catherine Mulligan, Mitzi Melnicoff, Alice Kent Stoddard, Aubrey Levinthal, Martha Armstrong, Mickayel Thurin, Edith Neff, Barbara Bullock, Gertrude Fisher-Fishman, Mary Cassatt, Millicent Krouse, Betty W. Hubbard and Helen Corson Hovenden. Blanchard was the great-aunt of Mrs. John S. Haug.

In the 1880s, she painted the portrait of Florence Sellers Coxe Paul. Her most well-known work, Hagar and Ishmael, was exhibited at the French Salon in 1888 and was then bought by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1890, she published Ideal Heads, a 21-page book with black-and-white illustrations by various artists, including the first illustration published by Jessie Willcox Smith. In 1893, she exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago: "Pierrot", "Two Babies", and "All in Four Seconds" were exhibited in the Rotunda, Woman's Building, and "Hagar and Ishmael" was exhibited in the Palace of Fine Arts.

In 1895 she was featured, with other women painters, in an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer, "Prominent Women Artists in Their Cozy Studios"; the article highlighted how Waugh's studio walls were "papered with numerous sketches... the majority of them being head and figure poses, as this artist, as is well known, makes a specialty of portrait painting". In 1896, the studio, at 1530 Chestnut Street, was damaged by water due to a fire that destroyed the studio next to hers, belonging to Carol Beck.

In 1896, the portrait of Dr. Paul J. Sartain won the Norman W. Dodge prize at the National Academy of Design and was exhibited in 1901 at the Pan-American Exposition. She exhibited in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago and New York.

Waugh's illustrations from When Mother Was a Little Girl were made into chromolithographic postcards. She worked for McLoughlin Brothers, a New York publishing firm.

Ida Waugh was the lifelong companion of Amy Ella Blanchard (1856–1926), writer of children's literature. They met when Waugh was still living with her parents and Blanchard was hired as tutor of Waugh's younger brother, future painter Frederick Waugh. They remained together until Ida's death in 1919.

Waugh and Blanchard owned adjacent summer cottages on Bailey Island (Maine). Together, they organised the founding of a summer chapel there for the Episcopal church. The chapel was completed in 1916.

Ida Waugh died on 25th January 1919, at her home in New York City, at 245 East 19th Street, and is buried next to her father at The Woodlands (Philadelphia).