Sarah Choate Sears to Walt Whitman, 5 June [1890]

Correspondent:
Sarah Choate Sears (1858–1935) was an American artist, art collector, and patron, who trained in painting at the Cowles Art School and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her award-winning watercolors and photographs were exhibited at major expositions, including the World's Columbian Exhibition, the Universal Exposition in Paris, and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Through the influence of her friends, including the writer Gertrude Stein and the artist Mary Cassatt, Sears's collection included pieces from Impressionist and modernist artists, including Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Edouard Manet. For more information on Sears, see Erica E. Hirshler, A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston, 1870–1940 (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2001).