Barbara Lehman Smith Book Signing - "Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones: The Artist Who Lived Twice"

While still a teenager, New York critics proclaimed Elizabeth Sparkhawk-Jones as the “find of the year” in 1908.  Then, she disappeared. 

Seventeen years ago, while moving from one office to another at St. Joseph Medical Center, public relations manager Barbara Smith inadvertently found and then rescued the scrapbooks and papers of American artist Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones, left forgotten in cardboard boxes for nearly a century. 

“Going through (the boxes) I felt Nancy Drew-ish,” Smith said.  Inside the boxes, Smith found an assortment of things from pencil sketches to receipts for art supplies belonging to Sparhawk-Jones (1885-1968).

The artist’s life fascinated Smith and led her to research and write a biography, “Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones: The Artist Who Lived Twice.”  Smith discovered that Sparhawk-Jones rose quickly in the art world as a teenager, until a breakdown resulted in her being admitted to an insane asylum for three years.  “She came back in the 1940s and had a huge second career,” Smith said.  Sparhawk-Jones, a Baltimore native lived most of her life in Philadelphia, where she would go on to achieve critical success as a painter for a second time.  Collectors of Sparhawk-Jones’ work included: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Whitney Museum of Art’s Juliana Force, William Merritt Chase and many others.