NANCY MAYBIN FERGUSON (1872-1967)
A native of Philadelphia, Nancy Maybin Ferguson spent nearly two decades devoted to her artistic studies, beginning with her enrollment at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women in the 1890s under Elliott Daingerfield, whose instruction she later credited as having a significant impact on her work: “I think due to Mr. Daingerfield’s influence in Composition class, the Old Masters became a thing apart, to be looked on with awe and reverence, especially the primitive religious ones…Mr. Daingerfield taught the method of glazing and I found to my surprise, I could copy with some degree of accuracy.”
Ferguson spent several summers working with Hawthorne in Provincetown before eventually purchasing her own home and thereafter dividing her time between Massachusetts and Philadelphia. She was enchanted by the tiny fishing community at the tip of Cape Cod and found much to inspire her among its winding roads, charming clapboard houses and throngs of summertime visitors: “I liked to paint the streets, crowded with people, happy when carts, automobiles and people did not block my view, and strangers asked no questions. But the solitude and quietness of the dunes from where one could look down at the town and bay below, afforded an opportunity for undisturbed painting of real beauty.”
