The following biography was researched, compiled, and written by Geoffrey K. Fleming, Executive Director, Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV.

RUTH HUDSON LEE (June 9, 1885 – March 14, 1973)

A.K.A. “Mrs. Ralph M. Lee”

Painter in oil and watercolor, pastels, photographer. Born in Ellisburg, Jefferson County, New York, the daughter of Mary Tanner (1861 – 1944) and the American portrait painter and photographer, William L. Hudson (1862 – 1950). By 1900 the family was ensconced in East Orange, Essex County, New Jersey, where her father had a studio, and later moved to upstate New York.

Obviously, some of her earliest instruction would have been received at the hands of her father. Following her attendance in local schools, she was accepted to Syracuse University, where she received her B.F.A. in 1915 and her M.F.A. in 1935. In 1915 she was the recipient of a scholarship in the Syracuse University College of Fine Arts “for the highest general average in literary and art studies.”

Prior to 1915 – and during her studies for her B.F.A. – she was employed as an instructor at the Syracuse High School. She married her husband, Ralph M. Lee (1885 – 1949), around this time. During her long career she studied under a number of prominent American artists, including: Wayman Elbridge Adams (1883 – 1959) in Elizabethtown, Essex County, New York; George Pearse Ennis (1884 – 1936) in Eastport, Washington County, Maine; Howard Everett Giles (1876 – 1955); Paul Ludwig Gill (1894 – 1938) at Syracuse University; Elliot O’Hara (1890 – 1969) at Goose Rocks Beach, York County, Maine; and with Charles Webster Hawthorne (1872 – 1930).

She came under the influence of Hawthorne at his art school located in Provincetown, Barnstable County, Massachusetts. Established in 1899, Hawthorne’s Cape Cod School of Art was a popular place of study for American women during the first decades of the 20th century. Among the works she created while in Provincetown is a view depicting the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House which is now part of the permanent collection of the Provincetown Art Association & Museum.

Lee does not appear to have ever exhibited her paintings in Provincetown as her heart was always in Syracuse, where she would serve as a professor of painting and drawing in the college of fine arts at Syracuse University from roughly 1921 through the 1951. Though primarily an oil painter for much of her career, she took up painting in watercolor in 1927. At her 1930 solo watercolor exhibition at the Syracuse Museum of Fine Art, a reviewer noted that “One cannot help but smile with pleasure on looking at her work any more than one can help from smiling when encountering her beaming countenance or hearing her enthusiastic voice.”

She moved to Washington, D.C. in 1951 and resided there until 1976. During her time in Washington she exhibited with the Washington Water Color Club, where she had first exhibited way back in the early 1930s, and at the Corcoran Museum of Art. At some point during the 1950s she moved just outside the capital, to Chevy Chase, Montgomery County, Maryland, where she was residing in 1959. She moved to Ventura County, California in 1971 to be closer to her son, Capt. Paul Lee, and her grandchildren.

Ruth Hudson Lee died in Thousand Oaks, Ventura County, California on March 14, 1973 at the age of eighty-seven years. She was buried near her parents and her husband in the Ellisburg Rural Cemetery located in Ellisburg, Jefferson County, New York.

Lee was highly exhibited during her lifetime, and though there are undoubtedly other exhibitions in which she participated, those presently known include the following: Syracuse University Thumb Box Exhibition, Syracuse, NY, 1914 (prize); Syracuse Museum of Fine Art, Syracuse, NY, 1923-25 (twice), 1927-28, 1930 (solo), 1948 (prize), 1952; Syracuse Arts and Crafts Guild, Syracuse, NY, 1923; Syracuse Art Association, Syracuse, NY, 1927; Washington Water Color Club, Washington, DC, 1934; Arnot Art Gallery, Elmira, NY, 1940; Syracuse University Library, Syracuse, NY, 1940; Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA, 1940; Utica Art Club, Utica, NY, 1940 (prize); Kent State University, Kent, OH, 1941; Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, DC, 1941; Russell Sage College, Troy, NY, 1944; Neville Public Museum, Green Bay, WI, 1948; Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY, 1948 (prize); Cortland Free Library Art Gallery, Cortland, NY, 1948-49; New Jersey College for Women, Brunswick, NJ, 1950; National League of American Pen Women, [unknown location], 1950 (prize); Purdue University Union, West Lafayette, IN, 1951; Albany Institute of History & Art, Albany, NY, (u.d.); American Water Color Society, New York, NY, (u.d.); Argent Gallery, New York, NY, (u.d.); Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY, (u.d.); Associated Artists of Syracuse, Syracuse, NY, (u.d.); Baltimore Water Color Club, Baltimore, MD, (u.d.); Binghamton Art Gallery, Binghamton, NY, (u.d., solo); Butler Art Institute, Youngstown, OH, (u.d.); Canton Museum of Art, Canton, OH, (u.d.); Cayuga Museum of History and Art, Auburn, NY, (u.d., solo); Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, (u.d.); Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, (u.d.); Eight Syracuse Watercolorists, Syracuse, NY, (u.d.); Everhart Museum of Art, Scranton, PA, (u.d., solo); Kentucky State University, Bowling Green, KY, (u.d.); Moore Institute, Philadelphia, PA, (u.d.); Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY, (u.d.); National Association of Women Painters & Sculptors, New York, NY, (u.d.); Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, (u.d.); Philadelphia Watercolor Club, Philadelphia, PA, (u.d.); Rundell Gallery, Rochester, NY, (u.d.); Springfield Art League, Springfield, MA, (u.d.); Staten Island Museum, Staten Island, NY, (u.d.); Troy Public Library, Troy, NY (twice, u.d.); University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, (u.d.); University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, (u.d.); Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, (u.d.); Worcester Museum of Art, Worcester, MA, (u.d.); Charleston, WV (unknown location & date); Concord, NH (unknown location & date); East Aurora, NY (unknown location & date).

She was a member of the American Watercolor Society, Baltimore Water Color Club, Eight Syracuse Watercolorists, National Association of Women Artists, National Association of Women Painters & Sculptors, National League of American Pen Women, Syracuse Art Association and the Washington Water Color Club. Lee also regularly lectured on art and art history at various institutions across the United States. Her granddaughter is the southern watercolor portraitist and painter, Carl Ann Lee Hedrick.

Lee’s works are in the following public collections at present: Provincetown Art Association & Museum, Provincetown, MA; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY. A number of her works also reside in private collections throughout the United States.