Helen Corson Hovenden (1847âÂÂ1935) was a Philadelphia-area painter who specialized in portraits and domestic scenes, sometimes of children with pets, and in watercolors of birds and flowers.
Both her parents had been abolitionists, and risked hefty fines and federal prison to assist persons escaping enslavement.
She married the Irish-born genre painter Thomas Hovenden. Their son, Thomas Hovenden Jr., became a civil engineer. Their daughter, Martha Maulsby Hovenden, became a sculptor.
The Woodmere Art Museum in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia holds a number of Helen Corson Hovenden's works, along with works by her husband and daughter.
Helen Corson was born in Plymouth Meeting, Whitemarsh Township, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Quakers George and Martha Maulsby Corson. She attended the Plymouth Friends School, and the Philadelphia School of Design for Women.
She moved to France in 1875 to study painting at the Académie Julian in Paris. She exhibited at the Paris Salons of 1876, 1879 and 1880.
In 1880, she met Irish painter Thomas Hovenden at the summer artist colony at Pont-Aven, France. They returned to the United States later that year, and were married at the Plymouth Friends Meetinghouse on June 9, 1881.
"[Thomas Hovenden] would often speak of his wife's talent being superior to his own. However that may be, it is certain that she was both an inspiration and a help to him in the execution of his great work."
The newlyweds settled into her late parents' house, across Germantown Pike from the meetinghouse. Her maternal grandfather, Samuel Maulsby, had built the house in 1795. He and her paternal grandfather, Joseph Corson, had been lifelong friends and ardent abolitionists. Both had been founding members of the Plymouth Meeting Anti-Slavery Society in 1831. The Maulsby-Corson House was an important stop on the Underground Railroad for close to thirty years, until her father's death in 1860.
Waking up each morning as children, Helen Corson and her five siblings never knew whether there would be newly-arrived guests around the breakfast table.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 increased the penalties for giving assistance to someone escaping enslavement to six months in federal prison and a $1,000 fine. George and Martha Maulsby Corson were involved in hiding Jane Johnson, whose 1855 escape to freedom exposed a loophole in the federal law. Following a nationally-publicized victory in federal court in Philadelphia, Johnson was hidden at the Corsons' house in Plymouth Meeting to prevent pro-slavery activists from abducting her and returning her to bondage.
The meetinghouse had allowed the Anti-Slavery Society to use its building for lectures for fifteen years, but that permission was denied in 1856. George Corson responded by building Abolition Hall, his own lecture hall and meeting place.
Twenty-five years later, Thomas Hovenden turned Abolition Hall into his studio, and found inspiration in the righteous anti-slavery arguments that had been made there.
Helen Corson Hovenden exhibited sporadically at the annual exhibitions of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The nine works she showed between 1885 and 1905 were portraits or domestic scenes, some of which included pets.
She exhibited domestic scenes of children at the National Academy of Design in 1885 and 1886.
Daughter Martha Maulsby Hovenden later served as a director of the Conshohocken Art League. In 1966, the League hosted the first posthumous joint exhibition of Thomas and Helen Corson Hovenden's works.
Helen Corson Hovenden wrote in 1910: "Thomas Hovenden lost his life on an unguarded grade crossing of the Pennsylvania Railroad near his home, August 14, 1895, in an attempt to save the life of a little girl [nine-year-old Bessie Pifer] who was crossing in front of an approaching engine. Both were killed."
Rev. William Henry Furness gave the eulogy at Thomas Hovenden's funeral, and the pall bearers were painter Thomas Eakins, sculptor Samuel Murray, and four Corson relatives.
Helen Corson Hovenden channeled her grief into advocacy, leading a successful public letter-writing campaign by Quaker women to pressure the Pennsylvania Railroad into elevating the tracks of its Trenton Cutoff, separating high-speed PRR trains from the grade level tracks of streetcars.
She donated her husband's last completed painting, Jerusalem the Golden (1892-94), to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in his memory. It features a sickly young woman, a worried husband, and the woman's sister playing "Jerusalem the Golden" in the background. The hymn "was meant to provide solace and comfort to the faithful in the face of death by offering salvation and promising peace in the afterlife."
Helen Corson Hovenden and her children moved to Washington, D.C., staying for several years with her unmarried sister Ida. Both children attended the Sidwell Friends School. Hovenden exhibited with the Society of Washington Artists in 1899 and 1900. The family moved back to Plymouth Meeting following Ida's April 1900 marriage to William Augustin DeCaindry.
A friend's remembrance: âÂÂBut I did have many lovely weekends visiting my Quaker friends—the famous Hovenden family at Plymouth Meeting. Mrs. Hovenden had been Miss Helen Corson, and as an artist had studied abroad and in Paris. In art circles she met Mr. Thomas Hovenden, of warm Irish background, and they married. He painted the famous work, Breaking Home Ties— ... Tragically, Mr. Hovenden was killed saving a small child from a Pennsylvania Railroad train bearing down on her at Spring Mill.âÂÂ
Fifteen years after his death, Helen Corson Hovenden wrote a biographical sketch of her late husband for the Historical Society of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. In that same volume, Rev. Ernst P. Pfatteicher gave a detailed account of Thomas Hovenden's funeral, and wrote about the continuing popularity of his paintings; Harrison S. Morris, Director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1882-1905, wrote about his friendship with Thomas Hovenden, and their years of working together.
Thomas Hovenden Jr. (1882âÂÂ1915) graduated from Sidwell Friends School with the class of 1899. He earned bachelor (1903) and masters (1904) degrees in civil engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He worked as an instructor at the university for a year, and was certified as a civil engineer in 1905. He joined the Philadelphia firm of W. W. Lindsay & Co., Inc., engineering consultants and contractors, and rose to general superintendent of the company. Over a decade, he designed and built blast furnaces, manufacturing plants and highway bridges in the United States and Cuba. Thomas Hovenden Jr. died of typhoid fever, September 18, 1915.
Martha Maulsby Hovenden (1884âÂÂ1941) studied under sculptor Charles Grafly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where her late father had taught painting. Subsequently, she studied under sculptor Hermon Atkins MacNeil at the Art Students League of New York. She had a moderately successful career, and lived with her mother in Plymouth Meeting until Helen Corson Hovenden's death in 1935. She continued to occupy the Maulsy/Corson/Hovenden House until her own death, on February 27, 1941. The most significant commission of Martha Maulsby Hovenden's career was for the two large limestone bas-relief panels inside the Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.