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Biography from Charleston Renaissance Gallery:
|  Hattie Saussy was born in Savannah, Georgia, on St. Patrick's Day, 1890. She was the daughter of Rachel Louise Shivers and Joachim Radcliffe Saussy, III, both of distinguished Georgia families. In 1901-02 Hattie Saussy's fifth grade class was the first in the public schools of Savannah to be taught art. Her teacher was Lila Cabaniss, a local artist. From 1903 to 1906 her art teachers included Miss Emma Wilkins, a local artist, and Mrs. Wilkins, Emma's mother.
Saussy's father died when she was fourteen, but her mother provided all the inspiration she needed to develop her natural artistic gifts and early interest in drawing. She later recollected, "I was always the kid on the block who painted paper dolls and made Christmas cards." Saussy frequented the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences in Savannah and was particularly influenced by its fine collection of French and American impressionist works.
After graduating from the Pape School, Saussy spent a year at Mary Baldwin Seminary (now College) in Staunton, Virginia, where she was recognized as the outstanding art pupil. While enrolled there she exhibited paintings at the Jamestown Tricentary Exposition in 1907. For the next four years she and her mother lived in New York.
In 1908-09 she attended the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (now the Parsons School of Design), where her teachers included R. Sloan Bredin. In 1911-12 she studied at the National Academy of Design, where she enrolled in the "Antique" class that drew from casts of Greek and Roman statuary, and in the "Life" class which drew from live models.
While in New York she frequented the Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club for women. In 1912 she studied under Eugene E. Speicher at the Art Students League. Among her other instructors were Eliot O'Hara, Frank V. DuMond and George Bridgman, whose anatomical studies influenced Saussy.
She was given a recommendation to teach at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art, but instead went to Europe and studied in the Paris studio of E.A. Taylor, who designed stained glass. She also traveled and sketched in Luxembourg; Lucerne, Switzerland; Munich, Germany; Innsbruck, Austria, and Italy. Her tour was cut short, however, by the outbreak of World War I, and she was caught up in the pandemonium of Americans trying to get passage home.
Upon her return she resumed painting in New York and Savannah. In 1915 she received a severe blow in the accidental drowning of her older brother, and only sibling, Joachim Radcliffe Saussy IV, called "Rad." Later that year she went to Washington, D.C. where she worked in a government office for the duration of the war.
During 1920-21 Saussy taught art at Chatham Episcopal Institute (now Chatham Hall) in Virginia. In 1921-22 she visited Europe again. When she returned, she settled permanently in Savannah as a full-time artist, designing her own home with an attic studio.
For three months in 1923 she studied in Savannah with Adolphe W. Blondeim who had studied with William Merritt Chase. Always receptive to learning, she attended summer courses in 1950 and 1951 at Edward S. Shorter's art school at Burnville, North Carolina. She was herself a teacher in Savannah intermittently from the 1920s to the 1960s.
Saussy was active in the Savannah Art Club after 1920, and from 1932 to 1934 served successively as vice-president and president of the Georgia Association of Artists. She participated with other members of that group in exhibiting at several Georgia venues: the Telfair Academy in Savannah, the Columbus Museum of Arts and Sciences, the Augusta-Richmond County Museum, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Sometimes she exhibited at her own studio. Otherwise, she did not seek commercial outlets for her work. Not only did she not depend on sales for her livelihood, but she was able to sell to collectors across the country by her reputation alone.
Saussy traveled and painted extensively in the Carolinas and north Georgia. From 1947 to 1952 she made several visits to New Orleans, painting street scenes in the city and bayous in the country. On one excursion into north Georgia in 1972, she broke her hip, and thereafter was confined to the area about her home. She died on January 13, 1978. A retrospective of her work was held in 1982 in Savannah under the sponsorship of the Historic Savannah Foundation. Her work included portraits, still lifes and landscapes, in watercolors and oils, and early in life she designed greeting cards and stained glass, theatrical costumes and sets. Informality is the principal characteristic of her mature work.
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Biography from Morris Museum of Art:
| The following biography has been provided January 2004 by Karen Towers Klacsmann, Adjunct Assistant Curator for Research, Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia.
Hattie Saussy was born on March 17, 1890, in Savannah, Georgia, to Rachel Louise (Shivers) and Joachim Radcliffe Saussy III. Her immediate family included a sister who died at the age of two and a younger brother, Rad, who died in 1915 at the age of twenty-three. Hattie’s native city exposed her to art and artistic training at an early age, and she pursued it unhindered by her blindness in one eye, the result of a childhood accident.
In 1901, when Hattie was in the fifth grade, art instruction was added to the public school curriculum, and the students were taught by Lila Cabaniss. Hattie also received private instruction from Mrs. G. A. Wilkins and her daughter, Emma. An invaluable aid to the artistic development of residents of Savannah was the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, the oldest art museum in the region. In addition to art classes from visiting artists, the Telfair housed plaster casts from antique sculpture and an international collection of contemporary art that were copied as a component of Saussy’s early training. Hattie graduated from the Pape School and chose instruction that would take her far from home.
At the age of seventeen, Hattie enrolled at Mary Baldwin Seminary (now Mary Baldwin College) in Staunton, Virginia, where she spent a single academic year. She reminisced about her year there: “Ken Miller was one of the instructors, and we had a very interesting life class. But I soon learned to like the out-of-doors, you don’t have to pay a model . . . .”[1] Also that year, her paintings were included in the art exhibition at the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition (1907) which was held at Hampton Roads, Virginia.
Hattie, accompanied by her widowed mother, spent the next four years living in New York City in pursuit of additional artistic development. She studied at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (now Parsons School of Design), the National Academy of Design, and the Art Students League. Her teachers during this period were: R. Sloan Bredin, Eugene Speicher, Eliot O’Hara, Frank DuMond, and George Bridgman. She was a member of the Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club and exhibited work at the Three Arts Club of New York. In 1913, Saussy left New York for a grand tour of Europe.
In Paris, Saussy studied with stained glass designer E. A. Taylor and his wife while she resided at the Girls Club in Paris. She visited much of Europe and was particularly impressed with Venice. While traveling throughout Europe, Hattie favored watercolor renderings of the sites, a medium more suited to her peripatetic life. Forced to return home because of the outbreak of World War I, Saussy divided her time between New York and Savannah until 1915, when she took a wartime office position with the government in Washington, D.C.
Except for a one-year teaching position at Chatham Episcopal Institute in Virginia, 1920-21, Hattie resided in Savannah for the rest of her life, where she enjoyed her circle of friends, supported the artistic community, and traveled throughout the region, depicting the landscape in an impressionistic style. She continued to study with Adolphe Blondheim when he came to the Telfair Academy for several months in 1923, and, in the 1950s, with Edward Shorter and Frank Stanley Herring at the Shorter School of Art in Burnsville, North Carolina. Her style matured and reflected the influence of her additional training. She was also known for her portraits of family and friends.
Hattie Saussy became a member of the Savannah Art Association shortly after it was formed in 1920. Her support and membership continued throughout her life, and she served it in various leadership capacities. She was a founding member of the Association of Georgia Artists, established in 1929, and served as the first president of this organization. Her work was exhibited with these organizations as well as with the Southern States Art League.
In 1972, while on an outdoor painting excursion, Hattie broke her hip. Except for rare, brief outings, the injury confined her to her home for the rest of her life. She continued to paint but favored still life portraits. She died on January 13, 1978.
There are nine works by Hattie Saussy in the collection of the Morris Museum of Art, comprised of landscapes, portraits, and still-life paintings, and they range in date over the course of her life. All are oil paintings. In addition, there is a portrait of the artist by Christopher A. D. Murphy, Jr.
Other museums that include her work in their collections are the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia; the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia; the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, South Carolina; and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Additional citations containing Hattie Saussy are found in:
Kelly, James C. The South on Paper: Line, Color and Light. Spartanburg, S.C.: Robert M. Hicklin, Jr., 1985.
Rush, Thetis B. Hattie Saussy, Georgia Painter. Spartanburg, S.C.: Robert M. Hicklin Jr., 1983.
Vigtel, Gudmund. 100 Years of Painting in Georgia. Atlanta: Alston & Bird, 1992.
[1] Dinny Jones, “Art Association’s Show Opens,” Savannah Morning News, 3 September 1974.
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