In October 1925, the residents of the town of Corinth, Vermont, were poring over printed handbills inviting them to a box social at the local Meadow Meeting House. The event promised an opportunity for young men and women to mingle, musical entertainment, and an “exhibition of oils by the notable Hilda Belcher depicting portraits and the natural beauty of these parts.”

Almost exactly 100 years later, Amy Peberdy, trustee and keeper of the Meeting House journals, discovered an online photo of the handbill and decided to hold a centennial celebration at the still-standing structure. It too was advertised as a box social, albeit in a different and more modern mode. There was music. But Amy was particularly taken with the aforementioned artist Hilda Belcher. She researched Belcher’s work and discovered that the Belcher homestead in Pittsford, Vermont, still existed, currently inhabited by Stephen Belcher, a great-nephew. And so, as part of the September 2025 celebration, Stephen Belcher occupied the entry room of the Meadow Meeting House, displaying photos of some of his great-aunt’s works and sharing voluminous family scrapbooks detailing Hilda Belcher’s painting career. In effect, Hilda had returned to Corinth’s meetinghouse one more time, albeit a century later.

Hilda Belcher was born in 1881 in Pittsford, Vermont, to Stephen Belcher, a manufacturer of stained glass, and Martha Wood Belcher, an artist. During Hilda’s adolescence, the family moved to New Jersey, where Hilda graduated from high school in 1900 as class valedictorian. Though the family moved from time to time, they always retained their home in Vermont. As a young woman, Hilda made her way to New York City where she attended the New York School of Art and studied with some of the luminaries of the time: William Merritt Chase, George Bellows, and Robert Henri. Henri and a handful of compatriots pioneered the then-revolutionary Ashcan School of American realism. Hilda also studied at the Arts Student League of New York.

 

Early Accolades

Some artists, and particularly women, work in obscurity throughout their lifetimes and are discovered at some point after their deaths when it is almost too late to give them their due. But this was not the case with Hilda Belcher. Remarkably, given the constraints of gender at the time, Belcher was a successful and lauded artist during her own lifetime. In 1935, Anne Miller Downs, a reviewer for The New York Times, called Belcher “one of the most distinguished women artists in America.”

Accolades found Hilda and her work early on. As a young artist trying to build her career, she submitted her work to art contests. The Knitted Shawl (also called Young Girl in Yellow) won the prestigious Strathmore Prize from the New York Watercolor Club in 1908, resulting in the surely satisfying headline “Girl Painter Wins Prize from 692 Men Competitors.” “Her success in capturing the coveted honor fairly took away the breath of the . . . men competitors, who saw themselves obliged to take second place to the young Vermont student,” said
The New York Times.

Just one year earlier The Checkered Dress had earned Hilda membership in the New York Watercolor Club. It’s a visually striking piece; in addition to its artistic qualities, it is known for another reason—the identity of the model who sat for part of the painting. The work was not an official portrait of any particular individual. The dress, according to Stephen Belcher, Hilda’s great-nephew, was likely modeled by a close neighbor at home in Vermont. Hilda, now back in New York City, needed to finish the painting and searched for a model for the face. In a letter dated October 13, 1907, she wrote to her mother, “I have secured a most fascinating girl at the house to pose for the face. I must tell you more about her someday.”

“The house” was a boarding house at 153 East 62nd Street where Hilda lived. The “fascinating girl” was a fellow boarder there. Her name was Georgia O’Keeffe.

Six days later, again to her mother, Hilda wrote about a hectic schedule that included finishing some illustrations she had contracted to do: “. . .  then I had a day and a half to finish up my watercolor and Georgia O’Keeffe stood by most nobly, posing after school until it was too dark to see the brushes, and then getting up at six the next morning for a session before breakfast.”

 

Art Theft

If theft of one’s work is a kind of tribute (albeit an unfortunate and criminal one), Hilda’s professional experience included that as well. In December 1934, The New York Times reported: “PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 23.—“Portrait by Night ” . . . was stolen from a wall of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts today after being cut from its gilt frame. The thief apparently worked during the noon hour as the loss was discovered by Samuel Coutchman, a guard, about 1 PM. He found only the upper fourth of the canvas left in its frame. The rest had been cut away, probably with a razor or sharp penknife. The manner in which it had been sliced from the frame, leaving only the narrowest of margins above the head of its one figure, a girl in blue basking in the reflected light of an open fireplace, virtually precluded the possibility that it had been filched by an art lover. . .”

Despite two initial suspects who were seen lurking around the gallery earlier in the day, the painting was never recovered. A newspaper in East Orange, New Jersey, speculated that the police “ . . .  figure it might have been someone in love with Miss Belcher, though she has pooh-poohed the idea to the press.” Another, apparently baseless, claim was that the painting may have been stolen by a jealous professional rival.

 

A Realistic Style

Martha Richardson, owner of Martha Richardson Fine Art, a gallery on Newbury Street in Boston, and who represents the estate of Hilda Belcher, describes Belcher’s art as demonstrating “amazing technical skill as a watercolorist.” She further states that the painter “worked in a realistic style influenced by the Ashcan School . . . an early 20th century movement eschewing ‘pretty’ subjects depicted by Impressionist artists in favor of more direct, ‘realistic’ representations.” Martha and others see a direct line between Ashcan’s founder Robert Henri and the work of his student, Hilda.

Hilda painted portraits and scenes of life in Vermont and New York City. She often painted relatives, especially children, and cats. Her oeuvre included something unusual for the time from a white artist—several paintings produced over many years of Black American subjects. She had been commissioned to paint a portrait in Savannah, Georgia, and her introduction to the city proved a fruitful one. She returned often to paint portraits and other representations of the city’s African American community.

Since Hilda Belcher’s death in 1963, there have been a handful of exhibitions of her work in Vermont and elsewhere. (Despite her travels, she referred to herself as a “thorough-going Vermonter.”) Her works can be found in many private and public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art,  the Vermont Historical Society in Montpelier, and at the Robert Hull Fleming Museum in Burlington, where The Knitted Shawl/Young Girl in Yellow—the painting that left those 692 male competitors “breathless”—has been added recently to its collection.  

 

 

Exciting News

A rare opportunity to see Hilda Belcher’s work is coming soon. Martha Richardson Fine Art in Boston, Massachusetts, will be hosting an exhibition of the artist’s work. The opening is set for May 2, 2026, from
2 to 5pm, and it will run through June 6, 2026.

Martha Richardson Fine Art

38 Newbury Street, 4th Floor

Boston, MA

martharichardsonfineart.com