Dames
The Fortnightly of Chicago
Summer Program Series on Zoom
Thursday, August 27, 2020
Seriously Good Programming
Our thanks to The Fortnightly of Chicago for inviting Illinois Dames to their virtual program about Rue Winterbotham Carpenter whose portrait hangs at Lathrop House. Seventy-two guests enjoyed the digital home advantage as they logged in to view Mary Beth Brown interpret of the life and times of Dame Rue.
Rue Winterbotham Carpenter
1876-1931
HISTORICAL DRAMATIZATION
By former Fortnightly president, Mary Beth Brown
Joined the Illinois Society in 1927
Ancestor: Henry Wolcott (Connecticut)
Illinois Dame, Chicago-based Rue Carpenter became one of the most forward-thinking American figures in the interior design and arts communities. The Chicago we know today might be a different city without her influence. Unlike her contemporary Elsie de Wolfe, Carpenter lived in relative obscurity.
She oversaw the evolution of important public and private interiors including the Casino Club, the Fortnightly of Chicago, the Arts Club, and the Auditorium Theatre, all in Chicago, as well as the Double Six Club in the Waldorf-Astoria and Elizabeth Arden’s salon in New York. Thanks to astute preservation efforts, some of her private commissions still exude their original defining glamour and freshness, and there is no mistaking her touch!
Carpenter’s career fused the artistic worlds of design and music. Her husband, John Alden Carpenter, was one of the first composers to use jazz rhythms in orchestral music. The couple was active in social circles with and Igor Stravinsky, Cole Porter, Sir John Lavery, Gertrude Stein, and Gerald and Sara Murphy (of F. Scott Fitzgerald fame!). The Carpenters participated in the European art scene and in the summer of 1923, they were guests of the Murphys on the Cote d’Azur in France together with Picasso and his wife. A month later, Picasso, referencing a photo of Rue, her daughter Ginny, and a third woman (sometimes said to be Sara Murphy) on the beach, drew Trois nus féminins.
She was president of the Arts Club in Chicago and responsible for opening Chicagoans’ eyes to the work of Brancusi, Braque, Picasso, and more. The author Stephen Longstreet recalled that she was “avant-garde when the word was unknown in Chicago.”
Join Us
Join us for our September program where you will become more familiar with corn (yes, corn!), through the curious examination of a most astonishing plant that sustains the world. Food historian and author Cynthia Clampitt will give us the chance to discover this thoroughly Midwestern phenom: Tuesday, September 22nd, 11:00 a.m. on Zoom.
