Grace Albee

Grace Albee was a pioneering American printmaker whose career spanned over six decades, producing more than 250 works in linocut, woodcut, and wood engraving. Born in North Scituate, Rhode Island, she studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and later at the Institut d'Esthetique Contemporaine in Paris. Albee began printmaking in the 1910s, initially creating promotional linocuts for a marionette theater she and her husband, muralist Percy Albee, developed. After raising five children, she resumed her artistic career in the 1920s, gaining recognition for her linocuts of New England scenes. Her technical skill and distinctive approach to relief printing brought her early success, including solo exhibitions and praise from the Providence Art Club. In 1928, she moved with her family to Paris, where her interest in both urban and rural landscapes flourished. There, she exhibited widely and established herself independently from her husband.

Returning to the United States in 1933, Albee settled first in New York City and then in rural Pennsylvania. Her prints reflected the changing environments around her—from New York’s modern architecture to Pennsylvania’s pastoral farms and stone houses. In 1942, she became an Associate member of the National Academy of Design, and by 1946, was its first woman elected as a full Academician in the graphic arts. Albee continued working into her 90s and earned more than fifty awards during her lifetime. Her prints are now held in over thirty major museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She died in 1985, just two days before her 95th birthday, leaving a legacy as one of America's foremost female printmakers.