Eleanor Simms Black was a Pittsburgh Pennsylvania artist who was born in Washington D.C. in 1872.  Black was a plein-air oil painter who specialized in landscapes. She  traveled and painted all over the Eastern seaboard from Virginia to Providence Rhode Island.  She also painted in the American West, where she created notable views of Yosemite. 

Schooled at the Cape Cod School of Art and the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C., where she was a distinguished student of Howard Helmick and Charles W. Hawthorne.  She had exhibits at the Corcoran Gallery (1926), the National Academy of Design (1925), the Society of Independent Artists, and at the Southern States Art League Annual Exhibition.   According to Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, she exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1924.  She is listed in Mallet’s Index of Artists, which states that as of 1934 she was living in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, where she was a member of the Pittsburgh Artists’ Association. Also, according to Mallett’s, her paintings appeared in American Art Annual (prior to 1948, the time of publication of Mallett’s Index of Artists).  Two years before her death in 1949 she was inducted into Who’s Who In American Art.  She is also listed in Who Was Who in American Art.

Sources:
Mallett's Index of Artists; Mantle Fieldings Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers; Who Was Who in American Art; and information derived from data about paintings shown on the internet.

Information courtesy of René Ruffner