Clara Erskine Clement Waters

Clara Erskine Clement Waters (1834-1916) was an American art historian, lecturer, and traveler, born in St. Louis and educated at home by private tutors. A trip to Palestine and Turkey in 1868 produced her first book, the privately printed Simple Story of the Orient (1869); she toured Europe widely and went around the world in 1883-84. Her reputation rests on accessible art reference works, among them A Handbook of Legendary and Mythological Art (1871), Artists of the Nineteenth Century and Their Works (1879, with Laurence Hutton), and Women in the Fine Arts (1904). She published as Clement and, after her 1882 marriage to Edwin Forbes Waters, as Waters, doing much to bring art history to lay American readers.