Helen M. Knowlton
Helen Mary Knowlton (August 16, 1832May 5, 1918) was an American artist, art instructor and author. She taught in Boston from 1871 until the mid-1910s, when she was in her 70s. Her instructor and later employer, William Morris Hunt, was the subject of a portrait she made and several books; she is considered his principal biographer. Early life Helen Mary Knowlton was born on August 16, 1832, in Littleton, Massachusetts, the second of nine children born to J.S.C and Anna W. Knowlton. She was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts and attended private and public schools. Beginning in 1834, her father owned and ran the Worcester Palladium. He died in 1871 and after that the three Knowlton sisters ran the paper for a number of years. For four years, beginning in 1865, she gave guitar lessons. Education She studied under the supervision of artist and teacher William Morris Hunt, who had an "experimental approach" towards art, starting in 1868. Hunt began classes for women after she let him know of 40 women interested in studying art. In the 1880s she studied under Frank Duveneck in Munich, Germany. In the summer of 1881 Knowlton was Duveneck's student in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he held