User:Pdebee/Grace Hall Hemingway

Grace Hall Hemingway (June 15, 1872 – June 28, 1951) was an American opera singer, music teacher, and painter. She was Ernest Hemingway's mother.

Biography
Grace Hall was the daughter of wealthy merchant Ernest Miller Hall and Caroline Hancock. After attending several schools in her native Chicago, she became a pupil at the Oak Park High School. From 1895, she undertook training for Grand opéra with Luiza Cappiani in New York. In 1896, Hall debuted as a talented contralto with the Apollo-Club in Madison Square Garden, and later was offered a contract by the Metropolitan Opera, but refused it because her eyes were bothered by the stage lighting.

On October 1, 1896, she married Dr. Clarence Edmonds Hemingway and the couple had six children: Marcelline (1898); Ernest Miller (1899); Ursula (1902); Madelaine, a.k.a. "Sunny" (1904); Carol (1911); and Leicester Clarence (1915). After her marriage, Hall Hemingway gave music lessons, directed the children's church choir and the orchestra at the First Congregational Church of Oak Park, and ended up earning more than her husband. She insisted on instrumental lessons for Marcelline (viola) and Ernest (violoncello).

Hall Hemingway was also an active member of the Suburban Civics and Equal Suffrage Club in Oak Park, during the era of the New Woman (1890–1920), with Women's suffrage as an national issue.

In 1924, at the age of 52, Hall Hemingway began to paint and attended classes at the Art Institute of Chicago and other art schools. In an interview in the April 1937 issue of Artistry Magazine, she claimed to have painted over 600 pictures, mainly landscapes. She belonged to the Oak Park Art League, including as its director for six years.

After her husband committed suicide in 1928, Hall Hemingway blamed her son Ernest for it. The relationship between mother and son became so strained that, in 1951, he did not attend her funeral in Oak Park.