Ruth Payne Burgess

Ruth Payne Burgess, (October 11, 1865 in Montpelier, Vermont – March 11, 1934 in New York), was a naturalistic painter of portraits, still lifes, and genre work. Personal life Ruth Payne Jewett was born in Montpelier, Vermont in 1865, the daughter of Elisha P. Jewett and Julia Kellogg Field Jewett. Her grandparents were Captain Nathan Jewett and Ruth Payne and her great-grandfather was Elisha Payne. She attended school in Northampton, Massachusetts, at the Mary A. Burnham School. Ruth Payne Jewett met John William Burgess in Vermont through a mutual friend, the artist Thomas Waterman Wood. Burgess founded the Columbia University's political science department. She married John William Burgess on September 2, 1885. Burgess was previously married on August 24, 1869, to Augusta Thayer Jones, who died in 1884. She was described as an artist who was "highly intelligent, well educated, and an accomplished musician." Ruth and her husband had one child, Elisha Payne Jewett Burgess, and in 1905 had houses in New York City and Montpelier, Vermont. After John Burgess retired from Columbia, the couple lived in Newport, Rhode Island in a house named "Athenwood" and in Brookline, Massachusetts.