During the 1890s, photographer, printer, and social advocate Francis Watts Lee was part of a circle of avant-garde artists and intellectuals who formed Boston’s lively bohemian community.
Lee is largely forgotten today, but his story and the lively cultural scene he inhabited, have been vividly brought back to life in a new book by Dr. Patricia Fanning, professor of sociology.
Richly illustrated with photographs by Lee and several of his colleagues, Artful Lives, The Francis Watts Lee Family and Their Times is an outgrowth of a previous book by Fanning about another member of the era’s creative circle, photographer F. Holland Day.
“It’s an interesting time period. Boston was a small city and people really knew each other and worked collaboratively,” Dr. Fanning said.
It was through researching her 2008 book on Day that Dr. Fanning first learned of Lee and his family. Day took a series of striking photographs of Lee’s daughter, Peggy, before she died at age seven of juvenile diabetes. A portrait of the child by another photographer, Gertrude Käsebier, is considered one of Käsebier’s most iconic works.
“There really wasn’t much written about them and I thought it was worth exploring,” Dr. Fanning said of the twice-married Lee – who worked as a printer at the Boston Public Library – and his family.
She said in recounting their lives she sought to also provide a window into the culture of the time, including the arts but also such facets of life as how families coped with medical issues. In addition to losing a daughter to illness, Lee had a daughter who lost her hearing in infancy.
Dr. Fanning, whose research included visiting California and Chicago to track down Lee’s photographs and family letters, said she hopes readers come away with a “feel for the time, for some of the experiences and struggles that this particular family went through and how the culture of an age really affects people.” (University News)
