Alice M. (Wood) Baumgras [1859-1897]
American
Hollyhocks, ca.1888
Oil on canvas
21 x 17 inches
Signed at lower left : ‘Alice M. Baumgras’.

BIOGRAPHY

Alice M. (Wood) Baumgras (1859-1897) was an American landscape and flower painter.  She is most known for the 1888 book of poems and drawings based on her landscape and flower watercolors, By Lawn and Lea (Nims & Knight, Troy, NY, 1888 – 12 plates).  Baumgras was the daughter of Thomas Wood (1828-1877) & Margaret Wood (1823-1898) of Syracuse, NY.   Very little is known about the artist.  She may have married Erwin Cyrus Brainerd (Baumgras) (1863-1949), whose last name she took.  Brainerd-Baumgras’ parents where both painters and his father was the most well known portrait and still-life painter of Washington, DC.