Biography

Born in Richmond

Richmond, Virginia

Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...

, Virginia, she came to New York City in her early teens to study art. Her mother was Annie Ericsson Cudlipp, an Assistant Editor on the The Delineator

The Delineator

The Delineator was an American women's magazine of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, founded by the Butterick Publishing Company in 1869 under the name The Metropolitan Monthly. Its name was changed in 1875. In November 1926, under the editorship of Mrs...

 in 1909 when Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of...

 was Managing Editor. Dreiser became infatuated with Thelma, but her mother was strongly opposed to Dreiser's involvement with her daughter, which was platonic – Dreiser was married and twenty years her senior. Thelma's mother succeeded in breaking up the relationship by packing Thelma off to England and by reporting it to the directors of the Butterick Publishing Company, which cost Dreiser his job.

In England Cudlipp continued her training in art, winning but not accepting a Royal Academy scholarship. When she returned to America, she took lessons from Kenneth Hayes Miller

Kenneth Hayes Miller

Kenneth Hayes Miller was an American painter and teacher.Born in Oneida, New York, he studied at the Art Students League of New York with Kenyon Cox, Henry Siddons Mowbray and with William Merritt Chase at the New York School of Art. He died in New York City.-Students:Miller taught at the Art...

, one of Dreiser's closest friends among painters. She became well known as an illustrator for various newspapers and magazines, such as Harper's, Century

Century

A century is one hundred consecutive years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages .-Start and end in the Gregorian Calendar:...

, McClure's

McClure's

McClure's or McClure's Magazine was an American illustrated monthly periodical popular at the turn of the 20th century. The magazine is credited with creating muckraking journalism. Ida Tarbell's series in 1902 exposing the monopoly abuses of John D...

, and the Saturday Evening Post. In addition to her own work, she developed an interest in pre-Columbian sculpture, which she collected and promoted through lectures. She later developed a friendship with Dreiser, but it was not of a romantic nature. They exchanged letters with each other until Dreiser's death.

In 1918 she married Edwin Grosvenor, a successful attorney and cousin of ex-president Taft

William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft was the 27th President of the United States and later the tenth Chief Justice of the United States...

. Her husband died in 1930, and in 1933 she married Charles Seymour Whitman, who had been Governor of New York in 1915-1918. He died in 1947.