May Alcott was born on July 26, 1840 in Concord, Massachusetts, the fourth daughter and last child of transcendentalist philosopher and educator Amos Bronson Alcott and his wife Abigail May Alcott.  The family moved frequently but in 1857 they settled again in Concord in the Orchard House, now a museum to the Alcott family. 

May (called “Abbie” in childhood) grew up in an unconventional environment of progressive ideals that included the abolition of slavery, rights for women, and utopian and vegetarian living. Her parents’ close friends included such literary and reform giants as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Elizabeth Peabody, Margaret Fuller, and Lydia Maria Child.  She was one of four talented girls; her sisters Anna, Louisa, and Lizzie all had talents of their own – acting, writing, and music, respectively – and when May’s artistic abilities became evident, she was vigorously encouraged by parents who believed that talent was of divine origin.  The girls’ animated journals and letters describe the inventive ways they found to express themselves creatively throughout difficult years of financial hardship.  Many of these adventures and struggles appear in Louisa’s Little Women and her other writings, where dignity and creativity in the face of poverty is a common theme.  In Little Women, May is recognizable as the prototype for “Amy,” the spoiled artistic sister and constant antagonist of Louisa’s own character, “Jo.” 

May’s formal art education began early with predictable lessons in parlor portraiture and decorative sketching, such as copying the popular classic drawings of John Flaxman.  Being a lively and fun-loving girl, she often won the hearts of well-to-do friends and relatives who offered to fund her art lessons.  Three years of training at the Boston School of Design on Temple Place, plus lessons with painters Henry Vautin and Thomas Murphy Johnston, and sculptor Dr. William Rimmer, all contributed to her early artistic influences.  So did experience gained from teaching art to local children in Concord in her own studio, where her students included future sculptor Daniel Chester French and painter Mary Coleman Wheeler.  But by far her most important influence was the masterly and charismatic William Morris Hunt.  A friend and colleague of Jean François Millet, Hunt had worked side by side with the great painter in Barbizon, and returned to New England with many of his masterpieces.  His own style of painting emulated Millet’s deep, earthy colors and richly loaded brushes, and his devotion to the Barbizon style was a huge influence on the “Hunt Girls” – including May Alcott - in his famous “Talks on Art” classes, which began in 1868.  Hunt also inspired May with his admiration for the watercolors of J.M.W. Turner, and she would become in her own time best known as a successful copyist of Turner.  Virtually nothing is recorded of her time in Hunt’s class except for a brief mention of it by Louisa.  It is likely that her short period of study in the Hunt studio was a result at least in part of the poor reviews of her illustrations for the first edition of Little Women, as well as preparation for her first trip to Europe.

Early in 1870 May, Louisa, and a family friend, Alice Bartlett, left for a year in London, France, and Rome.  In Dinan, France, May was able to put to the test lessons learned from Hunt and Thomas Murphy Johnston (himself a top pupil of Hunt’s).  She loved the picturesque crumbling walls and ancient ruins covered with ivy, and her sketchbooks filled up fast, but she had never painted from nature before, and felt awkward in the use of colors.  Just as she was making progress, the outbreak of two things: the Franco-Prussian War, and the chronic eye infection (probably trachoma) that had troubled her since adolescence, curtailed the girls’ time in France and they headed to Vevey, Switzerland, where a surgical procedure was performed on May’s eyes that was ultimately unsuccessful.  In spite of it, she returned from this first study trip to Europe convinced that art was her true calling.  Her next trip (1873-1874) was spent in London studying the Turners at the South Kensington Museum and School.  Her work there defined her as an accomplished watercolorist and copyist.

In 1875 she established an art school in Concord for young women, long overdue and much needed.  This was a whirlwind period of May’s life during which she acted as manager of Orchard House, met with her new drawing school twice a week, commuted to Boston and Cambridge to hold other classes, and was a leader of a literary group that met at the Emerson’s home.  Her Turner copies were in high demand.  Her income from her profession was very good at this time, and in the year 1875 she presented her mother with a fine horse and carriage, and her father with the property adjoining Orchard House upon which he would build his School of Philosophy.

In the fall of 1876 she left for her final trip abroad and began her study of oil painting in Paris under the tutelage of Edouard Krug.  By this time a vocal feminist, May was determined to find instruction that was both aggressive and respectful of the female student.  Disgusted by the vulgar behavior of the male students she had witnessed at the Académie Julien, for a time she and some other women artists planned to open their own communal studio with visiting masters. It was not financially feasible and reluctantly the plan was abandoned.  She also considered studying with Thomas Couture in Villier-le-Bel, recommended by Hunt, but was put off by what she perceived to be his sexist attitudes.  She did well under the tutelage of the somewhat less inspiring M. Krug.  Ultimately, her own daring, aided by the criticism of the studio’s visiting instructors, Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse and Karl Müller, strengthened her technique. Her progress was remarkable, and her goal to one day paint in the manner of Pierre Edouard Frère, a popular Barbizon painter, seemed achievable.  After less than a year’s study she produced a still life that won entry into the Paris Salon of 1876.  Part of the colony of American artists in Paris that then included Mary Cassatt, Frank Millet, Frank Moss, William Henry Lippincott, Edwin H. Blashfield, and Frederick Bridgeman, May felt that the women’s work was fresher and more vital because they had not been confined to centuries of academic tradition.  Hunt had encouraged his female students to view that as an advantage, and May agreed, even as she craved the superior instruction.  She wrote with some scorn of the huge canvasses, exotic themes, and unnatural postures in the men’s work.  The women, she thought, painted with more strength.

The increasingly poor health of her mother back in Concord caused a sudden change in May’s plans.  Late in 1877 she returned to London and watercolor for what she hoped would be a quicker path to success, enabling her to return home sooner.  But shortly after arriving in London, she was devastated to learn of her mother’s death.  The event sent her into a period of uncharacteristically low spirits, regret, and self-accusation.  A young man named Ernst Nieriker, a Swiss-German businessman and violinist staying at the same boarding house in Bloomsbury, grew close to her at this time and comforted her through her grief.  Though Ernst was 15 years her junior, he and May were of similar temperaments.  They were married in March of 1878 and moved back to France where they enjoyed an idyllic honeymoon life in Meudon, and later Paris.

May continued to paint at the encouragement of her husband.  Her painting “La Negresse” was accepted at the Salon of 1879.  At this time she published a small guidebook for women artists called Studying Art Abroad and How To Do it Cheaply.  This publication, for artistic American girls wishing to navigate a strange and foreign city, offered a range of practical survival tips, from finding the best teaching masters and studios to finding the best neighborhoods and grocers.  She was also working with Louisa on a new novel based loosely on their own experiences as women artists in a man’s world, and how love and marriage may compromise one’s goals.  Back in Boston, Louisa was ill, and mortally bored with the type of work she had been obliged to produce since Little Women, but this new project, about two artistic friends, was injecting some hope and energy into her work.  May’s invigorating letters home during her studio years had been full of inspiring stories and exciting descriptions of the Paris art world. They both had great hopes for Diana and Persis.  Pregnancy slowed May’s artistic output at this time but she continued to paint.  She was at work on an exquisite still life of a shell and flowers when her daughter, Louisa May Nieriker (“Lulu”) was born.  A childbed infection set in one week later, and May Alcott Nieriker died on December 29, 1879 at the age of 39.  Lulu was left to Louisa May Alcott to raise as her own daughter in Concord.  Crushed and disheartened by her sister’s death, Louisa never completed Diana and Persis.

© Catherine Rivard, 2007

Source:
ALCOTT COLLECTION, HOUGHTON LIBRARY, HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY. The article is the result of nearly 30 years of original research on the Alcotts in the United States and Europe, primarily from the papers at the Houghton Library, Harvard.