Lucile Swan Photograph Album
Collection — Box: 1
Identifier: GTM-090102
A photograph album from Lucile Swan's life in China (1930-1939), including pictures of her sculpting, Chinese cultural events, the landscape of Beijing, and her friend John Carter Vincent (a Foreign Service Officer) and his wife Elizabeth ("Betty").
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Lucile Swan, painter and sculptor, was born in Sioux City, Iowa in 1890. She received her early education at an Episcopal boarding school. In 1903 she moved to Chicago, and in 1908 she began studies at the Chicago Art Institute. Swan married artist Jerome Blum in 1912. From 1916 through 1923 she worked and traveled in Corsica, Japan, China, Tahiti, and France. In 1924 she divorced. Two years later, she closed her Chicago studio and moved to New York City where she continued her work.
In 1929, Swan accepted a commission from the Cenozoic Laboratory in Beijing and traveled to China that year. During Swan's time there (1929-1941) she created the portrait bust of Teilhard de Chardin, now at the Museum of Natural History in Paris; and a reconstruction (nicknamed "Nelly" by Teilhard) of one of the skulls of sinanthropus, the "Peking Man," under the supervision of Franz Weidenreich, German anatomist and paleoanthropologist. In August 1941, Swan left China in face of the Japanese occupation during World War II, taking up residence in Washington, DC. She died in New York City in 1965.
0.2 Cubic Feet (1 box)
English
Part of the Georgetown University Manuscripts Repository