Edith Varian Cockcroft
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).
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.
[18][19] 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.
[20] The patterns were based on precedents such as ancient mosaics, sailors' tattoos, kimono, medieval tapestries, folk embroidery, Aztec reliefs and Egyptian tomb discoveries.
[25] 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.
[27] 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).
[31] James Huneker described one of her St. Ives views as “fresh and interesting”[32] and noted that her nudes “shocked the conservative.”[33] 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.”[34] Her textiles and ceramics were displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago (1921), Brooklyn Museum (1926, 1937) and Montross Gallery (1937).
Cockcroft family gifts of coins are at the American Numismatic Society (accession numbers mostly 1929.59.1 through .58), and their silver vessels, jewelry and textiles are at the Cooper Hewitt and the Museum of the City of New York.
