Samantha Littlefield Huntley

Samantha Littlefield Huntley (1865–1949) was a portrait artist who lived and worked in the Eastern United States and Italy during the early part of the 20th Century.

[4][6] While with Lefebvre, she noticed that her instructor, in line with the "innate politeness of the French masters," was giving her "pretty compliments" instead of accurate criticism.

[4] I found it amounted to sex discrimination, such a matter of custom and a habit so fixed that it was with the greatest difficulty I made Jules Lefebvre understand that I had come all the way to Paris to have my faults pointed out, not my perfections.When at last he did understand, the good man did me the honor to ask me to come to his studio every week with my work for criticism.

"[5] Huntley replied to a 1909 question asked by St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalist Marguerite Martyn as to the reason for a then-current compliment to a woman artist that "she paints just like a man!

It is only within twelve years that women have been admitted to the Beaux Arts to study upon equal terms with men.

[14] Other notable people she painted were Wisconsin Senator William F. Vilas and New York Governors Frank W. Higgins and Martin H.

[6] A group of supporters of Missouri Governor Herbert Spencer Hadley decided that the Republican Party would pay for a portrait of him.

[16] Mrs. Huntley sued Colonel Schoenberg, Sheriff Louis Nolte, General Frank Rumbold and U.S. District Attorney Charles A. Houts, who had suggested the picture be painted.

[17] Hadley and Nolte were also summonsed into the Cook County, Illinois, Circuit Court to show cause why they should not be compelled to pay $1,500 for the portrait.

He insisted that he be painted wearing a blue tie with white polka dots because that was the style he always wore.

The St. Louis Star said, "After placing several different mouths on the picture[,] Hadley and his political supporters declared that it did not look much like him," so they refused to pay the artist.

[6] By May 1913, Mrs. Huntley had brought suit for $1,185 against Houts and three other members of the Missouri State Legislature who had refused to pay her bill because the portrait had been changed after its completion.

She brought tents and food, and she helped care for survivors in the women's hospital and a girls' school.