SLOATSBURG, NY.- The painter, inventor, couturier, textile designer and ceramist Edith Varian Cockcroft (1881-1962), although acclaimed in her lifetime, was almost wholly forgotten after her death. On October 14, the historian Eve M. Kahn, a longtime New York Times contributor, will lecture about Cockcroft’s life and exhibit her artworks at Harmony Hall in Sloatsburg, New York, near the artist’s longtime home.

Cockcroft, a Brooklyn native, studied art with William Merritt Chase and traveled widely before World War I. Critics lauded her atmospheric views of French and British coastal villages and portraits of nudes against vibrant fabric backdrops. Le Figaro observed that she succeeded at depicting peasant life with “ardor or roughness,” and the New York Times praised the “character and vigor” of her work. (Many reviewers mistook her for a man, since she invariably left off her first name in her signatures on canvas.) She exhibited at venues including the Paris Salon, the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago. Collectors as elite as Moscow’s Ivan Morosov acquired her work.

In the 1920s, she ran a Manhattan couture studio and patented methods for printing silk, in patterns partly based on Javanese batiks. Her blouse-making kits were marketed nationwide as a “silk sensation,” and her clothes were worn by the performers Irene Castle and Jeanette MacDonald. In the 1930s, she moved to Sloatsburg, where she kept painting—from Europe to Haiti—and designing textiles while also producing dinnerware sets in metallic glazes.

Kahn has uncovered long published interviews with Cockcroft and tracked down people who knew her. The lecture, accompanied by a small exhibition of Edith’s ceramics and paintings, will also explore unsolved mysteries about Edith’s career and personal life.

For details about the October 14 event, 2 to 4 pm with refreshments, presented by the Friends of Harmony Hall-Jacob Sloat House (an 1848 mansion built by the industrialist Jacob Sloat), see https://www.friendsofharmonyhall.org.