Emily Muir was born in 1904 in Chicago. She studied art
with Richard Lahey at the Art Students League in New York. She
married sculptor William Muir and moved to Stonington, Maine in
1939. She was an accomplished painter, sculptor, writer, designer,
architect, conservationist and community activist. She was the
first woman to serve President Dwight D. Eisenhower's National
Commission of Fine Arts and later President Richard Nixon appointed
her to the advisory committee for the Kennedy Center for the Performing
Arts. She built a substantial career for herself as a painter
and a designer of homes.
Although Emily Muir was primarily known as a "Maine artist,"
in her earlier years she painted quite a number of scenes from
the West Indies. She and her husband Bill built dioramas for the
Moore-McCormick steamship line which were displayed at street
level windows in New York. Thus they were able to sight-see and
paint while on Moore-McCormick's payroll.
She also wrote an charming autobiography
called "The Time of My Life". Her descriptions of her
early years at The Arts Students League, where she met her husband,
and their struggles as starving artists during the Depression
are particularly poignant. it was also the title of her retrospective
at The Farnswoth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine from April to August
2002. Copies of the book are available at The Liros gallery for
$19.95.
