Nieriker, Abigail May Alcott, 1840-1879

Abigail May Alcott was born July 26, 1840, in Concord, Massachusetts, the youngest of the four daughters born to Amos Bronson Alcott and Abigail Sewall Alcott.

Her sister was the novelist Louisa May Alcott, who supported her studies in Europe and with whom she had a fond relationship, although Louisa May was at times jealous of her family life as well as her ability to get what she wanted and needed.

Artistic from an early age, she was the inspiration for Amy, one of the sisters in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, who was described as follows: "She was never so happy as when copying flowers, designing fairies, or illustrating stories with queer specimens of art."

She studied teaching at the Bowdoin School, a Boston public school beginning in January, 1853. Taking over for Louisa in 1861, May taught at the first Kindergarten founded by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody for a month before returning to her own work. Beginning in December, 1860, May was in Syracuse, New York, where she taught an early form of art therapy at Dr. Wilbur's asylum (Syracuse State School). then returned home in August, 1861 or 1862 to begin teaching art at the Concord school run by her father's friend Franklin Benjamin Sanborn.

Beginning in 1859, Alcott studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. May Alcott visited Paris, studied at the Académie Julian in 1870 and exhibited in both cities, as well as elsewhere in the US and in London. She painted mainly flowers, but also made excellent copies of works by J.M.W. Turner. She studied art anatomy with William Rimmer in Boston, and also studied with William Morris Hunt, Krug, Vautier and Müller among others. She taught art to young Daniel Chester French.

She studied in Paris, London and Rome during three European trips in 1870, 1873 and 1877, which were made possible by the publication in 1868 of her sister Louisa's book Little Women. She traveled on at least one of the trips with Alice Bartlett and her sister Louisa May, where she "came into her own as an artist." She studied sculpture, sketching and painting. In Europe she found that women had greater educational opportunities than in the United States, but the art academies did not allow women to paint live nude models. For that, she studied under Krug, who managed to enable both male and female students to paint live models.

Alcott had illustrated the first edition of Little Women, to a negative critical reception. The early illustrations were made before her trips to and studies in Europe.

After studying in Paris, she subsequently divided her time between Boston, London and Paris. Her strength was as a copyist and as a painter of still life, either in oils or watercolors. Her success as a copyist of Turner was such as to command the praise of Mr. John Ruskin, and secure the adoption of some of her work for the pupils to copy at the South Kensington schools in London.

She published Concord Sketches with a preface by her sister Louisa May (Boston, 1869). After having studied in Europe, she had become "an accomplished artist" by the 1870s, and her works during that time showed marked improvement compared to the earlier illustrations for Little Women and the "quirky" depiction of Walden Pond in Concord Sketches. Her works after her European studies and exposure to great works of art reflected "a surer hand, a clearer focus, and a broader vision as the world".

She created the plan and outfitted a studio in 1875 for a Concord art center to support and promote emerging artists.

In 1877, her still life was the only painting by an American woman to be exhibited in the Paris Salon, selected over the work of Mary Cassatt. She made portraits and paintings of exterior scenes, some with an oriental flair. John Ruskin praised her copies of J.M.W. Turner, having called her "the foremost copyist of Turner of her time." Her strength was as a copyist and as a painter of still life, in oils and watercolors, and she painted many panels featuring flowers on a black background. A panel of goldenrod given to neighbor/mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson still hangs in his study. Several can also be seen at the Orchard House in Concord.

She was living in London and studying landscape art when she met Ernest Nieriker. The couple married on March 22, 1878, in London. The marriage was said by authors Eiselein and Phillips to have occurred despite her family's reluctance. In contrast, Louisa Alcott called the day a "happy event" and described Ernest as a handsome, cultivated and successful "tender friend". Further, "May is old enough to choose for herself, and seems so happy in the new relation that we have nothing to say against it." May was 38 years old, and Ernest Nieriker a 22-year-old Swiss tobacco merchant and violinist. Ernest was supportive of May's artist career and had helped her through the death of her mother on November 25, 1877, and they were engaged in February 1878. The couple honeymooned in Le Havre and then lived in Meudon, a Parisian suburb, where she primarily lived after her marriage.

On November 8, 1879, in Paris, May gave birth to a daughter, Louisa May "Lulu." Seven weeks later on December 29, 1879, May died, possibly of childbed fever. By her wish, and because Ernest traveled often for work, May's sister, Louisa May brought up Lulu until her death in 1888. Then, Lulu was raised by her father, Ernest Nieriker, in Zurich, Switzerland.