Lucia Coyner

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Artist Details

  • Lucia
  • Sophronia
  • Hotchkiss
  • Coyner
  • Dr. Joseph(us) W. Coyner (Colfax, Indiana September 18, 1851-January 8, 1914, San Diego, California) married 2/10/1882 homeopathic physician; prominent in Masonic circles; members of Baptist church had 9 siblings, 1st one of whom did not live past 4 years 1878: Puite Medical College in Cincinnati; died of strangulated hernia in San Diego, living in La Jolla at the time; he is buried next to Etta Coyner Ewing (1865-1923), his sister more information available in Portrait and Biographical Album of Peoria County, 1890
  • n/a
  • June 7, 1847/1852
  • Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts
  • July 17, 1903
  • Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts
  • 1860: Shelburne, MA

    1879, 1889 : business and home  703 Main St.

    1883: 509 Hamilton, Peoria, IL

    husband’s business: 1892: 109 Perry Lane, Peoria, IL; still there 1901 (DAR directory)
  • Peoria, Illinois
  • Painter-Oil, Watercolorist
  • 1870: certificate from Cooper Institute, New York, New York
    student of Frederick Rondelf in New York, New York
    student of  H. Thompson in Paris
  • Array
  • 1884: Ladies Art Society Exhibition, Peoria, Illinois

    1886: National Academy of Design, New York, New York; Wisteria;

    1888: Paris Salon de la Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts, ParIs, France; Nature Morte. 

    1889: Spring Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, New York; Still Life; In Picardy

    April 24-May 10, 1891: Eighth Annual Palette [Club] Exhibition, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois: oils: A Morning in Spring; At the End of the Garden; The Mill Bridge, Picardy; watercolor: A Country Road

    April 25-May 15, 1892: Ninth Annual Palette [Club] Exhibition, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois: Willows; A Street in Airaines [both oils]

    1893: World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, in Illinois Building; Old Mill in Picardy; In the Woods; Still Life, circa 1887

    September 29, 2018-April 13, 2019: Something Revealed, Pasadena Museum of History
  • Phelps, Tori. “Highlighting Women’s Art, Kotteman Collection”, Peoria Magazine, June 2005; available online Portrait and Biographical Album of Peoria County, IL. Chicago: Biographical Publishing Company, 1890. Putnam, Josephine Emerson. "An Appreciation of Peoria's Artists." Peoria Journal-Transcript, 4 Jan 1931.
  • Daughters of the American Revolution

    Ladies Art Society, Peoria, IL [precursor of Peoria Women’s Club]

    Palette Club, Chicago, Illinois

    Peoria Art League, Peoria, Illinois           

     
  • teacher, Peoria Art League, Peoria, Illinois
  • descendant of Gideon Hotchkiss (1716-1807)

    Lucia Coyner was a fine painter whose works were accepted in the 1886 and 1889 National Academy of Design exhibits in New York City--and in the Paris Salon of 1888. She had taken on the flat, broad painterly style popular in Paris at the time. She and her husband Joseph had studied in Europe in the mid-1880s...he to perfect his skills in homeopathic medicine and she to study art. In Paris, Lucia worked with an artist name Thompson before entering a painting in the Salon. She returned home a magnificent landscape painter, a newspaper article reported. Her close friends were "enraptured with her elegant work." Frank Peyraud, the Chicago artist who taught in Peoria and painted murals in the public library, gave her high praise for the times saying that "she sees like a woman and paints like a man."

    Lucia Hotchkiss, raised in Massachusetts, married Joseph Coyner in 1882. She came to Peoria where he had established a practice in homeopathic medicine in 1878. Their home--an elegant, brick mansion on Perry Street--was "a model of natural beauty, aside from its location which is one of the finest in the city...the home's presiding genius was (Lucia)." (Portrait Album) Soon after her arrival in Peoria, Lucia was appointed to fill a vacancy on the board of the Ladies Art Society. In April 1884, she loaned several of her paintings to the Society's exhibition...LilacsSnowballs, and The Wreck of the Laura Bridgman. Lilacs and snowballs (a kind of verbena) no doubt grew in her yard. But the Laura Bridgman she must have seen in the newspaper. The 330-ton schooner went aground in Asbury Park, New Jersey in June, 1883. A photograph (likely the one sent on to the newspapers soon after the disaster occurred) was taken of the beached vessel with curious villagers standing on the hull and in the water to get a good look at the ship. Apparently Lucia was captivated by the scene and decided to record it perhaps in a romantic, Turner-esque style. Lucia continued to paint in the 1890s, and she was one of the first women to be admitted to the Peoria Art League [founded 1894], where she later taught art classes. -- Submitted by Channy Lyons, Peoria Women Artists through 1970