Catherine Ann Janvier

Catherine Ann Janvier (née Drinker; May 1, 1841 – July 19, 1922) was an American artist, author, and translator.

[2][3] Her father commanded ships involved in East India trade and then established a partnership called James and Drinker in Hong Kong and Macao.

[3] At ten[2] or fifteen years of age,[3] one of her father's business associates and a powerful merchant, Hukwa, tried unsuccessfully to arrange a marriage between Janvier and his son.

[2][3] The Drinkers were living in the orient during the Opium Wars when the relationships between foreign traders and the Chinese was difficult.

During the trip, when the captain was drunk, Janvier navigated the ship[6] because the First Officer did not have sufficient ability to read the charts.

[8] In 1865, Janvier and the other Drinker children moved to their cousin Ann Elmslie's house in Philadelphia at 1906 Pine Street.

[3] Cathrine Drinker took classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,[2] where she studied under Thomas Eakins.

Cecilia's sister, Aimée Ernesta Beaux, married Henry Sturgis Drinker, Janvier's brother.

The paintings of Geoffrey Rudel and the Countess of Tripoli (1870), James Madison (1875), Daniel at Prayer (1876) and the lithograph Blessed Are the Meek (1871), all helped to develop her reputation as an artist.

[10] Drinker won the Mary Smith Prize in 1880 for The Guitar Player,[6] which in 1922 was among the collection of the Neighborhood Guild at Peace Dale, Rhode Island.

[2] On September 26, 1878, Catherine Ann Drinker married journalist Thomas Allibone Janvier in Drifton, Pennsylvania at St. James Church.

[7] Janvier translated a book about painting china that French ceramist Camille Piton-who moved to Philadelphia in 1878 and established an art school- wrote in 1878.

[12][15] Catherine lived on 59th Street in New York from 1913 to 1918[16][17] and with her brother Dr. Henry Drinker in Merion, Pennsylvania, by 1921, when she appeared on the Social Register.