Edward Emerson SIMMONS
An American from the Boston area (Concord, Massachusetts) who arrived in St Ives in 1887 via Concarneau, and began to exhibit locally and nationally. In 1890 he showed two works at the Dowdeswell Exhibition, and that same year he bravely challenged the Royal Academy on their hanging and selling policies in relation to the paintings they accepted for exhibition.
An account of the conflict is included in Whybrow (St Ives, Portrait of a Colony pp 37-8), and this marked a kind of watershed in the RA hegemony, after which artists began to look around for additional exhibiting spaces for their work. He was married to Vesta S SIMMONS (nee Shallenberger) and their home address was at Trelyon, Halsetown, but the address given for submissions to shows was 23 The Terrace, St Ives, Cornwall - perhaps their working studio. His latest address (Graves 1893) was given as Paris. He died in Baltimore, Maryland.
media
Painter of figures, landscapes, murals and marine subjects
works and access
Works include: John Anderson, My Jo, John; Darby and Joan; A Roman Matron; Coast of Cornwall
exhibitions
Lanham's August 1889; Paris; Dowdeswell; RA; SS; NW
references
The Cornishman 1 Aug 1889
AskART.com
Census 1891
Dowdeswell Exhibition catalogue (see Hardie 2009 for repr)
Graves
Hardie (2009) Artists in Newlyn and West Cornwall (p345)
Johnson & Greutzner
Newton et al Painting at the Edge
Sharf & Wright CEL Green
Whybrow St Ives (Photo of pencil portrait of artist, 1890); Remembering St Ives;
C Wood Victorian Painters