Portal:Visual arts/Selected biography/13

Eleanor Norcross, born Ella Augusta Norcross (1854–1923), was an American painter who studied under William Merritt Chase and Alfred Stevens. She lived the majority of her adult life in Paris, France as an artist and collector and spent the summers in her hometown of Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Norcross painted Impressionist portraits and still lifes, and is better known for her paintings of genteel interiors.

Her father provided her a comfortable living, under the proviso that she would not sell her paintings. With a life mission to provide people from her hometown the ability to view great works of art, Norcross collected art, made copies of paintings of Old Masters, and systematically documented decorative arts from the 12th through the 19th century. Her funding and art collection were used to establish the Fitchburg Art Museum.

In 1924, her works were shown posthumously in Paris at the Louvre and Salon d'Automne, where Norcross was the first American to have had a retrospective. Her works were also shown the following year at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.