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that she must turn her attention to fulltime motherhood. Later in life, in the 1950s, daughter Esther got her started again, painting in a lower corner of the barn at Pigeon Cove. She made a few tries at still lifes (they remain now in the barn) but she was unhappy with the results. 

Esther senior's cat paintings belong to an early era in her life, when she was studying in her late teens with UncleJo and painting at home in Winchester. The cats were Esther's great pets, several of them in the Winchester home. 

Cat Licking Himself, oil (at 188)
Portfolio of cat paintings, oils and pastels (in 188 barn, one given to Anne Warner (Mrs. Frank Warner, Long Island)

There also exist a few small sketchbooks, pencil sketchesof a summer visit to Sharon Springs (Maine? or N.H.) back in 1890s, some sketches of her children in the 1900s (at 188)

Her love of painting was realized again later in life when her daughter, Esther, became a serious painter and brought to the house her painter friends. Young Esther's teas at 92 Mt. Vernon Street, Boston and later at 188 Granite St., Pigeon Cove brought into her mother's life peopleof the next generation's art world: musicians, writers and painters, museum directors: (painting and music). Some were: Bill and Ann McNulty, the Aldro Hibbards, Sam Hershey and wife, Furman and Milly Fink, Leon & Dyette Kroll, the Henry Schumanns (music) Bill and Marjorie Benet (writers), Ruth Holberg (writer), Lloyd Coes (illustrator), Hetty Beatty (writer, sculptor), John Corbino, Nancy Hale & husbands (writer) George and Jinny Demetrios (sculptor, writer, Folly Cove designer) Geof and Giovanna Calastri Lawford (archt & scultress), Herb Barnetts, Gifford & Maud Beal, Ren & Helen Beal and all those others incl Francis & Pamela Taylor, Julian [[F?]] belonging to the Rockport Art Ass., when young Esther was president (after Hibbard). 

All Esther senior's children had innate talent in drawing, much of it undoubtedly due to her early fostering. Esther senior was overjoyed when her son Oliver late in his life married a painter Gwen Hardy, again took up his talents and produced a number of oils. Her son, Tom, who became an architect, had a fruitful period with watercolors in the late 1920s and exhibited a couple of times in Manhattan and Philadelphia, but admitted that his heart was never in it -- he was painting to please his family as it was expected of him. He much preferred the planning aspects of architecture to the design elements, although he produced very creditable renderings.