LETTERS READ: Lady Louisiana Artist Angela Gregory

LETTERS READ

Co-hosted by Neal Auction Company.

Angela Gregory was born to the New Orleans intellectual white elite in 1903. A time when proper ladies accompanied their mother to country club tea. With her parent’s blessing, Angela took a different path. At an early age, she knew that she wanted to be an artist. Not just an artist, a sculptress in stone, to be precise!

Her earliest influence was her mother, Selina Brès Gregory. A Newcomb College alum and recognized Newcomb Pottery artist. Angela was precocious. When 14, she learned clay modeling and relief casting from Ellsworth Woodward at Newcomb. She also took classes from Albert Rieker at the Arts and Crafts Club in New Orleans and spent a summer working in the New York studio of Charles Keck. She graduated from Newcomb in 1925. With her parent’s patronage, she moved to Paris to study art.

It is to be remembered that in 1925 it would be rare if not impossible for a lady to travel abroad alone without a husband, brother, or other trusted chaperone such as a matron auntie. Life as in independent individual was squarely the privilege of men. For the determined Angela, this was no barrier.

In Paris, she became the only American ever to study in Antoine Bourdelle’s stone sculpture studio. Angela Gregory credited her unusual success as a an early lady artist to Bourdelle’s tutelage and belief in her as an artist. In the middle of the twentieth century when women had just been granted the vote, Angela Gregory became the “doyenne of Louisiana sculpture”. Producing major public and private art commissions significant today.

This podcast quotes from Gregory and Nancy Penrose's biography of Angela Gregory, from which the image can be found, A Dream and a Chisel.

Angela Gregory’s artwork, and that of many of her influences such as Selina Brès Gregory, William and Ellsworth Woodward, Newcomb pottery, are prized valuable pieces of art today. Her independent drive also influenced artists living today such as lady Louisiana artist, Jacqueline Bishop. Many Louisiana artists in this podcast are supported by Neal.