Helen Elizabeth King (American, died 1917) (  aka  Helen E. King, Helen King Hoag  ) Massachusetts Coast

Mrs. Helen Elizabeth King of Cleveland, Ohio was an important and well-known women regional artist of the nineteenth century and turn of the twentieth century. She was a pupil of R. Way Smith, at the Western Reserve School of Design for Women in the early 1880s. In 1884, King sent one of her paintings to New York City for exhibition. By the end of the 1880s, she had begun giving painting instruction at her studio in Cleveland City Hall.

In 1888, she was awarded, by the Columbus Centennial, the first prize on a still-life painting. She was becoming a successful and was being sought for commissions. In 1890, King went on a sketching trip to Cambridgeboro (Cambridge Springs), in northwest Pennsylvania with R. Way Smith and other of his art students. By this time King was principal of the art departments of Baldwin University in Berea, Ohio (now Baldwin Wallace University).

A serious artist, King spent time in New York City, studying with George B. Smiley in 1890 and traveled to the coast of Massachusetts to paint. She would return again in 1893. In 1891, King returned to Pennsylvania and spent time in the mountains near Hydetown and Titusville. 1892 found her in New City and Washington, D. C.

In 1892 she was commissioned to paint a copy of the famous painting of the Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman which was hanging in the War Department rooms in Washington. She was given a room with choice lighting and was lent a general’s coat to aid her in completing Sherman’s portrait. The painting would later be on exhibition at the Ohio Building at the 1892-93 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

In 1894, King married George M. Hoag, the city electrician. She continued to travel to the northeastern United States to paint and, throughout the mid to late 1890s, she traveled the Genessee valley of New York state, the Connecticut valley, the Berkshire hills, and the Adirondack mountains. In 1901, she made a foray westward; sketching in the Colorado mountains, Glenwood Springs, the lakes of the Grand Mesa and California Spring. She also painted along the Chagrin River.

She was a member of the Cleveland Art Club (in Cleveland’s City Hall) where she exhibited her paintings. In the 1900s, she held exhibitions of her paintings in her Cleveland home. A rarity in the realm of 19th century men artists, Helen Elizabeth King-Hoag rightly deserves to be recognized for the accomplished artist she was.