Lucy Scarborough Conant

Early in her career, Conant studied painting in France under the tutelage of Héctor Leroux, René Ménard, and of Jean-Paul Laurens, a professor at the Académie Julian, of whom she became a devoted disciple.

[4] Together they took lodging for the summer, which comprised two upstairs rooms in a house, and an attic which served as a kitchen, and afforded a view of the garden below and the sea in the distance.

Beaux described her as "a delicate, brilliant girl, struggling against ill-health and imperfect eyesight, to become the artist she was born to be ... [who] had superabundant humanity, and almost outdid me in instantaneous and warm interest in passing individuals, as well as in every sight and sound and color.

Alexander Harrison, who piqued Conant's interest in painting marine scenes, and Charles Lazar, who offered criticism and encouragement, shared a studio in the neighborhood.

She exhibited two works in the Palace of Fine Arts at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago – The Orchid Meadow (oil on canvas) and Nasturtiums (watercolor).

[9] However, unlike her friend Beaux, who achieved fame as a portrait artist, Conant's major interest for the greater part of her life was landscape painting in oils and watercolor.

Friend and fellow artist Henry Hunt Clark wrote in 1921: "Lucy Conant had no intention of abandoning her interest in painting when, some six years ago [about 1915] she took up the study of design itself ...

The number of productions set or costumed by her is a long one; eight plays for the Northampton Players, many others for schools, settlement houses and dramatic clubs, but notable among them are the pantomime The Willow Wife for the New England Conservatory of Music, and the Greek Harvest Festival pageant at Gloucester for which she also wrote the scenario.

However, her friend and fellow artist Thornton Oakley, writing in The American Magazine of Art only eight months after her death, began his tribute to her with this sentence: '"Lucy Scarborough Conant died in Boston on the last day of the year 1920.

"[2]: 269  Moreover, the Find A Grave web site shows a photograph of Conant's gravestone, located in South Cemetery, Windham County Connecticut, with the inscription "Born Mar.

An example is her essay In Asolo, describing the Italian hill town, which had been the setting for the verse drama Pippa Passes by the English poet Robert Browning.