Identity:

Ada Maud Story, née Broadwood, was the daughter of an English couple,Mary Davison and Thomas Capel Broadwood, and the granddaughter of the New Orleans jurist Alfred Hennin. In Rome in 1883 she married Thomas Waldo Story, an American sculptor, the son of William Wetmore Story, also a sculptor as well as an art critic, poet and literary editor.

On her death Ada Story left property in England worth £20,394.

Life:

JW was friendly with Story's husband Waldo, and as President of the Royal Society of British Artists, proposed him as a member in 1887. He was also responsible for Waldo joining the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers. Around 1883 JW painted a portrait of Story, Portrait of Mrs Waldo Story (YMSM 251).

Bibliography:

Times, London, Saturday, 2 July 1932, p. 8; Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980; MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995; Ramirez, Jan Seidler, 'William Wetmore Story', The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, ed. L. Macy, http://www.groveart.com. (accessed 2002.5); http://www.familysearch.org (accessed 2004.9).