Edith Varian Cockcroft (February 6, 1881 – October 19, 1962) was a Brooklyn-born painter, designer, inventor and ceramist, who exhibited at venues including the Paris Salon, National Academy of Design and Art Institute of Chicago. She was known for portraits of nudes posed against vibrant fabric backdrops as well as landscape paintings, often depicting European seacoasts. She patented and exhibited silks and velvets, produced ceramic dinnerware and designed clothing and theater sets. Her artworks were lauded for "boldness of decorative pattern and fearless use of color"“Past, Present and Future Rub Elbows”. New York Herald. 3 March 1914. and for their "character and vigor."“New York Water Color Club’s 25th Exhibition”. New York Times. 8 November 1914. Among the customers for her garments were the performers Irene Castle“Haledon Printed”. Master Silk Printer. 1 September 1922. and Jeanette MacDonald“Cockcroft Stage Costume”. Master Silk Printer. 1 November 1922. Edith typically signed her paintings and ceramics "E. Varian Cockcroft" or "Cockcroft," and it was reported in 1920 that her works "have such a strong masculine quality that she is generally thought to be a man."“Personette”. Asbury Park Press. 16 February 1920. She was a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts“Art Imports and Exports”. American Art News. 10 April 1909. and the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors,“Women Artists at Arlington Galleries”. American Art News. 28 November 1914. and she was a founding member of the New York Society of Women Artists.“Women Artists Form a New Group”. New York Times. 3 May 1925.
Biography
Her parents Robert Cockcroft (1847-1924) and Agnes E. Cockcroft (née Chase) (1846-1941), who lived at 202 Rodney Street in Brooklyn, were part of a prosperous family descended from early Dutch and Huguenot settlers in New York.Velazquez, Mariana, and Holbrook, Viola Vowers (1907). First Record Book of The Society of the Daughters of Holland Dames. New York: Society of the Daughters of Holland Dames. Edith trained briefly with William Merritt Chase“Illuminated Fabrics Rise to Illuminating Success”. The American Cloak and Suit Review. 1 April 1920. and started exhibiting by age 21.“In Local Studios”. Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 6 April 1902. Early in her career, she sometimes called herself Edyth or Edythe. In the early 1900s, her parents moved to their 1890s country house at 703 Franklin Turnpike in Allendale, New JerseyWardell, Patricia (1994). Allendale: Background of a Borough. Allendale, N.J.: Allendale Historical Society. By 1910, Edith had traveled and painted in France and England in the company of artists, including Andrew Dasburg, Florence Lucius (future wife of sculptor Jo Davidson) and W. Elmer Schofield and Murielle Schofield. Edith soon exhibited her canvases depicting Paris (Jardin du Luxembourg, Saint-Sulpice church), Brittany (Concarneau, Pont-Aven) and Cornwall (St. Ives, Newquay). She meanwhile had homes in Manhattan (her addresses over the years included 507 Madison Avenue, 21 MacDougal Alley and 2231 Broadway—alongside the Chase-founded arts academy later run by Frank Alvah Parsons). She married around 1914 to Charles Weyand (1867-1937), a mortgage broker in Allendale.
Starting around 1917, the couple ran Cockcroft Studios, a clothing and accessories workshop in Manhattan at 17 East 39th Street that generated about $50,000 a year in royalties. She had established it partly out of financial necessity; Charles's construction business had failed during World War I.Foster, Helen Herbert (1927). “Success her Rebound from Failure”. Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 18 September 1927. Also known as Cockcroft Studio and Cockcroft Silk Co., it offered custom outfits called "personality gowns" as well as blouses, dresses, nightgowns, handbags, hats and parasols, in "illuminated fabrics", especially with batik on silk and velvet.“Dresses”. Women’s Wear Daily. 27 June 1918. The Prizma film company made a short color movie, "Gowns Venus Would Envy," about her batik techniques."Making of Batik to be Shown in Films”. Women’s Wear Daily. 15 November 1919. In the 1920s, she and Charles patented dress and blouse fabric printing techniques under Patents 1,374,970A1,374,970A and 1,590,335A.1,590,335A“Designs Print Conforming to Garment Styles and Adaptable to All Fabrics”. Women’s Wear Daily. 29 March 1921.
Her bestselling products were kits for making a "Cockcroft Illuminated Blouse," which cost about $7 each; the package contained a yard or so of printed silk (plus thread and trimmings), with dotted outlines for cutting out the neckline, sleeves and belt. The shirts were makeable in an hour or so, even by the "rankest amateur," according to the journalist Mildred Adams.Mildred Adams (1921). “A $50,000 Idea in Silk”. The Woman's Journal. 17 December 1921. The patterns were based on precedents such as ancient mosaics, sailors' tattoos, kimono, medieval tapestries, folk embroidery, Aztec reliefs and Egyptian tomb discoveries. They were marketed at department stores, including Filene's and B. Altman and Co., as a "silk sensation" that enabled women "to look artistic without looking freakish."“The Cockcroft Blouse”. Master Silk Printer. 1 September 1922. Edith's blouses were worn by the performers Irene Castle, Jeanette MacDonald and Gladys Leslie,”Derby Velvet”. Dry Goods Economist. 28 January 1922. the composer Percy Grainger's mother Rose Grainger and the opera singer Jeanne Gordon.“The Programme of Fashion”. Theatre Magazine. 1 January 1920.
By the 1930s, Edith and Charles had left the garment business and moved to their country home overlooking the Ramapo River in Sloatsburg, New York. Her pottery workshop there specialized in dinnerware with metallic glazes and foliage, floral, animal and Greek deity motifs. The New York Sun called her ceramics "modern and yet somehow romantic."Boykin, Elizabeth MacRae (1939). “What American Artists Are Doing”. New York Sun. 20 November 1939. In the 1950s, under the auspices of the artist DeWitt Peters, Edith introduced ceramics classes to the Centre d'Art in Haiti.Center for Inter-American Relations (1968). Art of Haiti and Jamaica; a loan exhibition, October 10–27, 1968. New York: Center for Inter-American Relations, Art Gallery. She kept traveling and painting until shortly before her death, often working in watercolor, and depicting subjects including European hill towns, Haitian palm tree groves, Florida beaches and the Ramapo River’s banks. She died in Sloatsburg and is buried alongside her parents and her sister Fannie Carver (1869-1939) and brother-in-law Wallace Carver (1863-1921) at Valleau Cemetery in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
Exhibitions Before World War I, Edith exhibited paintings in Paris at the Salon d'Automne (1909-1911),“Les Salons de 1911”. Figaro. 15 April 1911. the International Art Union (1909), Salon des Indépendants (1910) and the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (1909, 1911) and in London at the Anglo-American Exposition (1914).“American Art at the Anglo-American Exposition”. The International Studio. 1 October 1914 At the 1909 Salon, the collector Ivan Morozov acquired her view of Concarneau in snow (now at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow).Sergei Makovsky (1912). “Catalogue Les Artistes Français de la Collection I. Morozoff à Moscou”. Apollon. Spring 1912. In New York, she was a frequent exhibitor at the National Academy of Design (1908, 1910-1915), New York Water Color Club (1910, 1914-1916), National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors (1914-1916, 1926, 1928, 1930) and New York Society of Women Artists (1926–31, 1934, 1936). Her other New York venues included Folsom Galleries (1916), G.R.D. Studio (founded in memory of the artist Gladys Roosevelt Dick, a cousin of Theodore Roosevelt through her father John Ellis Roosevelt) (1929, 1930), Macbeth Gallery (1915), MacDowell Club (1915), Montross Gallery (1916), Reinhardt Galleries (1915), Salons of America (1925), Society of Independent Artists (1917) and Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club (1915).“C. L. Wolfe Club’s Annual Show”. American Art News. 6 March 1915. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts displayed her work in several annual exhibitions (1910, 1911, 1913-1915, 1930). Edith also showed paintings at Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo (1910), Art Institute of Chicago (1914), Baltimore Water Color Club (1910), Carnegie International (1909, 1927), Corcoran Gallery of Art (1914-1915, 1928), Detroit Institute of Arts (1928), Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915), Philadelphia Water Color Club (1909, 1915), Rhode Island School of Design (1917), Rochester Memorial Art Gallery (1914), Rockland Center for the Arts (1961), St. Louis Art Museum (1910, 1914), Toledo Museum of Art (1928), Vassar College’s Taylor Hall (1928) and the Village Studio Guild in Ogunquit, Maine (1921). Critics and artists who lauded her paintings included Hamilton Easter FieldHamilton Easter Field (1921). “Comment on the Arts”. The Arts. 1 August 1921. and Forbes Watson.Forbes Watson (1928). “New York Women”. The Arts. 1 May 1928. James Huneker described one of her St. Ives views as “fresh and interesting”James Huneker (1908). “The Spring Academy”. New York Sun. 21 March 1908. and noted that her nudes “shocked the conservative.”James Huneker (1914). “The Seven Arts”. Puck. 11 April 1914. Among the reviewers who mistook her for a man was Guy Pène du Bois, who described her as an artist of portraits showing “that the spirit of the new art had at least knocked at his studio door, even if not convincingly.”Guy Pène du Bois (1914). “The Stronghold of Conservatism”. Vogue. 1 May 1914.
Her textiles and ceramics were displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago (1921), Brooklyn Museum (1926, 1937) and Montross Gallery (1937). In the 1930s, she designed sets and interiors and displayed paintings, ceramics and textiles at the County Theatre arts complex in Suffern, New York.“Suffern Gallery Exhibits Ceramics by E. V. Cockcroft”. Journal News. 14 August 1936. She was a friend of the agrarian philosopher Ralph Borsodi, and she occasionally worked on County Theatre sets with Borsodi."Season of One-Act Plays at Suffern Makes Good Start”. Journal News. 2 September 1932.
Legacy