Lucy M. Taggart

At 80 years old, Lucy M. Taggart physical status not available right now. We will update Lucy M. Taggart's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Taggart launched her art career in New York City, where she maintained a studio apartment. She also had a third-floor apartment and art studio at her parents' home at 1331 North Delaware Street in Indianapolis and an art studio at Amyvale, the summer home her parents built in 1915–16 at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Taggart also kept a studio at her brother's home, called Mount Airie, near French Lick, Indiana, about two miles from the family's French Lick Springs Hotel.

In 1919 Taggart's father distributed "the bulk of his fortune" to his wife, Eva, and their five children. His generosity provided Lucy with the financial resources to build a substantial summer home of her own. In 1922 and 1924 Taggart leased the estate home of Cecilia Beaux in Gloucester, Massachusetts, before deciding to build a home and studio on harbor-front property in Eastern Point, Massachusetts. Taggart's new home, named Tower of the Four Winds, was completed in 1929. It was designed by Boston architect Ralph Adams Cram in the French farmhouse style; Henry Davis Sleeper designed its interior.

Taggart sold her art and exhibited at a number of prestigious shows in the midwestern and eastern United States throughout the first three decades of the twentieth century. Venues included the Indiana Building at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis (1904), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia (1910 and 1912), at annual exhibitions of the Society of Western Artists in Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, and Saint Louis, the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York (1923), the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors in New York (1922 and 1936) and in Indianapolis (1923 and 1926), Hoosier Salon exhibitions in Chicago (1925–27, 1929, and 1931), and several exhibitions at the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis. In addition, a September landscape by Taggart appeared on the cover of McClure's magazine in 1905. She also arranged exhibitions, including one held in 1929 at her father's French Lick Springs Hotel that included thirty-eight American sculptors. (About a dozen sculptures created by sculptor Harriett Frishmuth, her friend and mentor, were included in the exhibition.)

Between 1925 and 1931 Taggart was a five-time exhibitor in the Hoosier Salon, a juried show that featured the work of Indiana artists. The annual exhibition was held during this period at the Marshall Field and Company's Picture Galleries in Chicago. Taggart's exhibited works included Still Life and Eleanor (1925), Carnival (1926), Summer (1927), Young Girl in Green (1929), and Janet (1931). Eleanor won the Hoosier Salon's Merit Award for figure composition in 1925; Carnival won a Merit Award in 1926 for best picture painted by a woman.

In 1929, the year that her father and sister-in-law died, Taggart abandoned her life as a practicing artist on the East Coast, returned to Indianapolis to care for her mother and the Taggart family home, and became an art teacher. Taggart taught painting and portraiture at the John Herron Art Institute from 1931 to 1934, although her involvement with the Institute began in 1915, when she was elected to the first of several terms as a member of its board of directors. She continued to serve on the board until 1958. Taggart donated her time as a faculty member at the school without compensation. She also served on the school's arts committee, helped raise funds, attracted publicity to the school, and donated artwork.

As the daughter of an influential Indiana politician and a practicing artist in Indiana and the East Coast, Taggart had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Because of her family's political connections, Taggart was acquainted with many Hoosier politicians, including U.S. Vice President Thomas R. Marshall, Indiana governors and U.S. Senators such as Samuel M. Ralston, John W. Kern, and Paul V. McNutt, as well as McNutt's wife, Kathleen. Taggart was also a friend of A. Piatt Andrew, a U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts. At the dedication ceremony for the George Rogers Clark Memorial in Vincennes, Indiana, in 1936, she met Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. Vice President Harry S. Truman visited French Lick just prior to becoming president. Taggart's artist friends and associates included Cecilia Beaux, Charles Hawthorne, Paul Manship, Walker Hancock, Gifford Beal and his brother, Reynolds Beal, Harry Sleeper, and numerous artists in Indiana. She was also a close friend of author and fellow Hoosier Booth Tarkington, as well as his first and second wives, and was godmother to his only child, Laurel.

Throughout her adult life Taggart was active in numerous art associations in Indiana and in the eastern United States, most notably the Art Association of Indianapolis, National Arts Club (New York), American Federation of Arts, North Shore Art Association (East Gloucester, Massachusetts), Grand Central Art Galleries (New York), National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, Provincetown Art Association, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

In addition to arts organizations, Taggart was a member of the Women's Committee of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. She played an "influential" role in bringing Fabien Sevitzky, the orchestra's second conductor to Indianapolis. Other memberships included the Indianapolis Dramatic Club, Contemporary Club of Indianapolis, Colonial Dames of America, National Society of Magna Carta Dames, and the Cosmopolitan Club of New York. She was also a member of Saint Paul's Episcopal Church in Indianapolis.

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